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Welcome to our “Soaring High – Flight Week” an at home week filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to things that can fly as well as some famous flight pioneers!
Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic with an introductory day. We started off with setting up the camp area with some cloud and sky backdrops as well as focusing on one of the most familiar objects that fly – airplanes! Then we created a few airplanes of our own! And, like all days, we added in some interesting books, writing / storytelling prompts, short videos, and activities to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!
INTRO
Your little ones likely have already seen an airplane – or maybe even been on one! But, they may not know how they fly or that they haven’t existed forever! It was interesting to see how they reacted to the very early airplanes 🙂
These sites are also great resources with pages on history, concepts, and activities:
- Airplane by Britannica Kids
- Science with Dr. Karl: How Planes Fly by National Geographic Kids
- Take Off with Paper Airplanes by Teach Engineering
Once they’ve gotten the idea of what flight is, then it was off to setting up the learning area – always a fun activity – and then reading, writing, crafting, and other activities!
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week! If they’re incredibly crafty and creative, having some extra and opened-ended crafts would be great to keep them engaged. Otherwise, a prepared activity would work well!
Along with the White Clouds & Blue Sky Backdrop, we also created a number of different types of paper airplanes and hung them up (after we did a good flight contest :))! If you don’t have a backdrop, you can also start off with a Light Blue Tablecover and use some construction paper or poster board to create some clouds!
We also brought out our Safari Ltd. In The Sky TOOB, which had several figurines useful for the remaining days of the week 🙂
WEEKLONG PROJECT
At the start of the week, we also introduce a weeklong project – this is great for reinforcing concepts learned throughout the day as well as allowing them to build time and project management skills.
For our weeklong project, we created a banner to note the timelines we were studying as well as poster board on the different types of flying machines we studied!
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Here are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- How Airplanes Fly! | Airplane Science by SciShow Kids (4m)
- Why do Planes Leave White Streaks in the Sky? by SciShow Kids (4m)
- How does an Aeroplane work? By Maddie’s Do You Know
- Paper Airplanes: Building, Testing, & Improving. Heads Up! By Teach Engineering
FOOD CRAFTS & SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
For our snack of the day, we used wafers and edible eyes to create some airplanes (We loosely followed the tutorial: Disney Planes Snack Attack by bentolunch.net. Alternatively, you can also create some yummy airplane snacks like peanuts or make some airplane shaped cookies using some Air Travel Cookie Cutters!
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
- Let’s Fly a Plane by Chris Ferrie
- Planes & Other Flying Machines by Jill McDonald
- National Geographic Kids: Planes by Amy Shields
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: FLIGHT, AIRPLANE, DRAG, LIFT, THRUST, WEIGHT
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Imagine you were an inventor who lived during a time before airplanes were first invented. How would you create the first airplane (or flying contraption)? What would it look like? Draw a picture!
- In a magical world where magicians can travel great distances without any sort of technology, what do you think they would use an airplane for?
THANK YOU
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest.
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Soaring High -Flight Week Days or our other DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
