Our Inquiry on Wind and Airplanes

Our students have been inquiring about paper airplanes and how they fly.  We started to talk about 

the wind and how it help the airplane move, what else does the wind help move?  They began to think about kites as well.  Mrs. Osborne brought in a pinwheel and started talking about how it works.  It was very interesting how they noticed when you stand and blow the pinwheel it did not work as well as when you ran and let the air push it.  HMMM who would have guessed.

 At recess they tested out their kites against the wind what happens when .the wind blows?

Will my kite float?  My kite floats when I run...my kite is still but when the wind blow it picks it up and floats....Very happy to see their own creations fly in the wind.  

 We took out kites and bubbles out in to the big yard to see what happens when the wind blows.

Our students noticed that....if your string is longer it is easier for the wind to to push up your kite.... Warrick had a kite with a small string and his did not fly as easily as the others.  

We also wanted to see if the direction we stood made a difference in the way our kites could fly

on this day if we stood  facing North the wind picked up our kites in air.  We also noticed that if your kite had tails like crepe paper or ribbon it seemed to fly better ( or it just seemed to us like they did)

                                      

                                       

Here are a couple of books we read that have very interesting facts 

regarding how the wind works. 

                                  

 We asked the Gr.6 class (Mrs. Ford) to help us make some airplanes as

 they just finished a unit on flight.  They were a great to our students showing them

how to make airplanes we had not built before.  After we built and tried out the

airplanes in the hallway we took them outside to fly them.  Some of our airplanes landed on the roof of the school, but that is part of the course. The biggest thrill with the airplanes was the glider that we saw which went from one end of the playground to the other.  I think the grade 7 boys were more excited then our kindergarten friends.  What a great experience for

our students and the grade 7's.  Thank you again Mrs. Ford and grade 7's