The Glorious Flight

I'd seen this book before we rowed it and always thought it looked kind of blah.  But one day when we visited our library it was sitting out on display and knowing it was a Five in a Row book, I checked it out.  We found it to be a great story and a rich unit. 

The first time I read the book aloud, I stumbled a bit with all the French names.   Later I found a site where you can download a reading of the book.  After listening simply listening to the audio sample, I found the names much easier to say.  In fact, it all kind of rolls off the tongue. 

Here are some of the highlights of the activities from this book:

We learned about the English channel and viewed pictures of the beautiful White Cliffs of Dover.

Onomatopoeia is such a fun word to say and it's a fun concept too.  After brainstorming onomatopoeia words, K dictated a story using those words.

For math one day, we talked about Roman numerals.  K had previously come across them elsewhere and was really curious about them.   In fact when I saw Roman numerals was one of the math activities, this was one of the reasons why I chose to do The Glorious Flight next. 

K made a watercolor picture of Louis Bleriot flying his plane based on the idea from this blog entry.   It turned out well! 

Then we sidetracked into a mini-study of airplanes.  We had an airplane day and Daddy showed how to make paper airplanes and everyone had fun testing them out.  We set up an English Channel in the hallway and tried to fly the planes across it.  The real Channel is about 20 miles wide at its narrowest.  Just as it took skill to cross it in an airplane for the first time in 1910, it took some practice and skill for a 6 year old to cross a bedsheet channel with a paper airplane.  Here is K giving her plane a little help.

  
B also demonstrated how airplane wings provide lift.

The next day we continued our airplane study by talking about the parts of an airplane and learning the pilot alphabet.  I coached K to greet Daddy with a "hi" in code when he came home, but on her own she exclaimed (laboriously) "Hotel India, Delta Alpha Delta Delta Yankee!"  We also enjoyed a game of airplane Go Fish from Homeschool Share.
Finally, K dictated a list of different types of transportation and we finished our unit with this youtube video of the crossing of the channel in a replica of the Bleriot XI.