The next book in Gabe's Five-In-A-Row curriculum was The Glorious Flight. It is the story of Louis Bleriot, the first man to fly across the English Channel in 1909. Considering how much Gabe and Ezra like airplanes, this was a real treat for them to study.
They loved hearing about how he kept building planes even when he crashed them or they didn't work at all.
They learned about Louis's home country of France. "They eat snails?!? Ewww!"
They learned about the parts of an airplane and what makes one fly instead of falling to the ground.
For a field trip, we drove the kids to end of the runway at PTI Airport to let them see planes take off and land. It was really windy that day and they were landing right over our heads.
We got to see a couple of planes land, including a small plane that was about the size of Louis Bleriot's plane. Unfortunately, we were run off by airport security after about 20 minutes.
Another treat for them was a travelling exhibit at Sciworks in Winston-Salem about flight, both planes and rockets. One station let you build a paper airplane and then launch it to see how well it flies.
The launchers took a bit of getting used to.
But before long, Olivia was launching her planes all the way to the wall.
Next was a pair of stations that had you build "helicopters" using paper cones and then seeing how long you could get them to hover over a fan. one fan was open and really tough to get your cone to stay up for long unless it was perfect.
The other had a cage around it to keep your cones in the air flow, making them go up with no problem at all.
Even Emma was able to get into the action.
The last station showed you how to build a paper rocket and then let you launch them.
First, you had to pump up the launcher
Once it got to the red zone...
you punch the button and make it fly!
