Teaching Day-by-Day: Air

Week One - Let's start up in the air with aircraft. Who flew where and in what?
1. Ask students to conduct a survey in their households to find out how much people know about airplanes and the history of flight. Design a questionnaire to get as much information as possible from family members. As the week goes on, see which person had the most correct answers.
2. The first manned flight was not by the Wright Brothers, but by a terrified manservant of inventor, Sir George Cayley. His invention went only 500 yards. Mark off a distance of 100 yards and see what objects you can design or use that will travel that distance in the air or on the ground.
3. Only three newspapers reported Orville and Wilbur Wright's first sustained manned flight in a controlled gasoline-powered aircraft. Have the students research the event and then write a story for the school newspaper.
4. Using tissue paper and bamboo sticks, have the students make models that resemble the Wright Brothers' first aircraft.
5. Oops! The first official U.S. airmail flight never made it to New York from Washington, D.C. The pilot discovered after take-off that no one had filled the fuel tank and he had to land in a cow pasture in Maryland. Together, make a list of famous mistakes in history.
6. Divide the class into five groups. Have four of the groups make illustrated time lines showing the history of aircraft. The fifth group devises a system for judging the time lines, using as many categories as possible. They then create an award for the winner in the most categories.
7. Gather together as many students as possible to design and fly their own paper airplanes. Make a chart showing the results of this contest.

Week Two - Let's spend the second week wherever the wind takes us.

8. Have students, with their family members, make a list of as many expressions, superstitions, stories and poems about the wind as possible.
9. Three sheets to the wind. Talk to your students about how that's an expression people sometimes use to describe a person who has had too much to drink. Where does the expression come from? Before they look it up, write down your students' guesses.
10. If everything the wind has blown away was stored in the wind's closet, what would you find if you opened the door? Have the students write a poem or story or make a collage about what they would find.
11. Wind Cave National Park was established in 1903. On a map of the United States, locate and mark as many national parks as possible.
12. Wind power. Divide students into groups of two or three to devise a wind-powered invention. They can make it or just design it on paper.
13. Windy books. Use the classroom and school library to locate as many books and stories as possible in which the wind is a character. In a chart or graph, have the kids organize the information that you find, using as many categories as possible.
14. Wind or wind? W-I-N-D is a homograph. This is, it can be pronounced two ways to form words with two different meanings. Make a list of as many other such words as possible.

Week Three - Let's do something about the weather this week.

15. Ask your students to talk to someone older than their parents about the ways he or she predicts the weather. They should then make a list of all the methods he or she uses. As the weeks go on, check to see which of the suggestions have some degree of accuracy.
16. Read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi and Ron Barrett (Atheneum, 1978). By the end of the story, the kids in the book think that the hills of snow with the sun behind them look like mashed potatoes with butter. Take a walk and point out sights that look like food.
17. The Farmer's Almanac has been making long-range weather predictions for many years. How could you check the accuracy of its predictions? Ask the students to list as many ways as possible and use them. Publish the results of their research.
18. Every so often Mother Nature throws a temper tantrum and we get a severe storm of one kind or another. Have your students list the different kinds of storms and then find out what the criteria are for categorizing such storms: i.e., When does a snowstorm become a blizzard?
19. The U.S. government agencies responsible for weather communications have used first names to identify hurricanes since 1953. In 1979 a change was made in the names used. Find out the names of the storms for as many years as possible, what the change was and why it was made.
20. Students should find as many statistics about the weather in your area as possible: annual snowfall, rainfall, high and low temperatures, etc.
21. "Why, when I was young, the snowdrifts were twelve feet high!" Help your students tape-record older people's stories about the worst weather that they remember.

Week Four - Let's spend Week Four with balloons and bubbles.

22. Super duper bubble solution Have students use detergents and soaps around the house to devise the best solution for making bubbles – no fair using commercial bubble solutions. They should give their product a name, put it in a bottle or jar and bring it to school.
23. Students design a commercial for their bubble product and act out the skit in front of the class. Later, students check the claims made in each other's commercials for accuracy.
24. Do some bubble research. What area of the playground is best for long-lasting bubbles? In which area do the bubbles travel farthest? Which solutions and bubble-makers are best for color? For longevity? For size?
25. In 1770 a Swedish chemist named Tobern Olof Bergman discovered a way to make carbonated water in commercial quantities. What difference did it make? How is carbonated water used today? In what products?
26. Do your students think they would go up in the air if they held enough helium-filled balloons? Have them imagine this happening to them and then write a story about where the balloons take them and how they get down – or do they?

27. As a class, inflate and twist small balloons to make sculptures and critters. Name them and put them on display in your classroom.

28. Have students use materials they can find around the house to make a collage of hot-air ballons such as the ones Phileas Fogg rode in. Does anyone know who Phileas Fogg is? Ask students to find out.

Week Five - There are only a few days left in March. Let's use them to investigate the air itself.

29. How pure is the air you breathe? Have students list the pollutants in your area.
30. Find out what's being done about air pollution in your community. Students should contact the local factories to find out what they are doing to prevent polluting the air. Contact the Board of Health to see what the rules and regulations are concerning emissions and pollutants.
31. Divide students into pairs and have them find a way to prove that air exists. They should then demonstrate their proof to the rest of the class.

Carol Otis Hurst is a children's book author whose latest book, A Killing in Plymouth Colony, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2003. Be sure to check out her website at www.carolhurst.com

March 2004, Vol.34, No.6