weekly wrap up 11-4-16--Learning about flight

For our book club the boys are reading about the Wright brothers and learning about the history of flight.  MarioFan and I are working with these resources at home.

If there is time we might do a couple of the experiments with the boys at coop

For the book club each mother and child came up with an activity to help cement the reading and understanding of flight.

MarioFan and I decided to look at gliders which is a toy that first interested the Wright brother to study flight.  We also look into making different paper airplanes and graphed how each plane did during flight.  A great site to make several easy  paper gliders and airplane can be found here  

we made 3 different gliders

This was a great glider that does very well

and five different paper airplanes

then we tried flying each one at home to see how they did.  We will be showing the boys in our club this and they will each be graphing how will each items flew.

At book club this week we had several activities to complete

The first activity was for the boys to recreate the wright brothers flight at kitty hawk using legos

The boys decided to start with the glider and we were all pleased with how much they remember from their individual readings.

The finished glider

Next they recreated the first airplane with the propeller on the back

of course they had to re enact the whole scenario as well:)

Next the boys went to the this site that explains the wright brothers process for deciding what components need to be  there for flight.

Lastly we experimented with three different paper gliders and  looked at what made each work 

We discovered that one glider preferred to be threw into the wind while another preferred to be thrown against the wind for best flight.  

It was nice to hear one of the boys announce that he didn't know science could be so much fun after our club had finished.  We didn't get to our paper airplanes this week so we will do that next week:) with the boys as they read about Amelia Earhart.


We had a field trip went to Washington University this week for another Young scientist workshop.  In the morning the kids has a enzymes class and did a few experiments.

This is an program run by graduate students

The kids were taught how distribution of enzymes works 

We also compared the difference between canned pineapple and fresh pineapple.  Due to the processing of pineapple  for canning it is missing certain enzymes.  This is evident when using gelatin.  

Gelatin is able to solidify with Can pineapple

but not with Fresh pineapple.  I never knew this!:)

The afternoon class was on island ecology and evolution.

The kids all had some interesting insight on this topic and it was great to see so many homeschoolers who understood evolution!

This weekend we are heading to Deutsch Days with some friends.  Will write about that for next week!