Interest was piqued as the students arrived and the spider web on the floor had been replaced with, what the students thought was a road. In reality we learned that it is a runway, just like at the airport.
For our morning meeting, we got down the balance scale and had a short demonstration on how to use the balance scale. I introduced vocabulary words: heavy, heavier, light, lighter, and balance. We used M&M's to help us learn how to balance the scale. One student grabbed a handful of M&M's and placed them in one balance cup and another student placed her handful in the other balance cup, to see if they were the same and balanced. We looked at and talked about which side was heavier, which side was lighter, and problem solved to see which cup needed more/less to make the scales balance. Once we got the scales to balance we counted the M&M's in each cup to discover how many M&M's were in each cup. To our delight, we discovered that when the scales balanced there were the exact same amount of M&M's in each cup.
For math we split up and one student worked with the scales while the other student worked on one-to-one correspondence and number recognition. They counted the number of hearts on the cards and used a clothespin to pin the correct number. Using clothespins was a new experience and the muscles in their fingers got a bit tired. Half way through the students got to trade places and do the other activity. I was also able to do some individual assessments as I observed their activities.
After all that hard work we pretended to be airplanes and tried to land on the runway. It was fun to watch the different interpretation of a plane landing. One student flew around the room and when she got to the runway she ran. The other student, who had been on an airplane, flew around the room and dropped to her knees to land her plane.
Our airplane theme continued through snack time. We made airplanes to eat using some of our favorite snack foods. The body of the plane was a celery stick with peanut butter, the wing was made of a banana halved lengthwise. The picture I saw was a graham cracker rectangle, but I was out of graham crackers so I used a banana. Our banana broke in half, but still tasted wonderful. We used grapes for the wheels and made yogurt clouds to complete the picture.
After snack, we didn't go outside because the students both have colds and weren't interested in going outside. Instead we played a fun game of M&M Numbers. We used our real M&M's to play the game, knowing next time that we will have to use the cardboard M&M's that come with the game.
We really needed some gross motor action. We did some cross over toe touches to understand the concept of opposite foot and hand. The purpose for this activity is so they would understand when started flying our airplanes that we needed to step out with the opposite foot to throw the airplane. The toe touches worked very well and the students understood the cross touching.
We folded a basic airplane from a piece of scrap booking paper (just because it was pretty) and then we made a simple helicopter from http://www.makermama.com/2011/02/paper-helicopter.html. Then it was time to fly our beauties. We learned that it was easier to get the correct foot out first then put the airplane in the opposite hand to fly it. I had envisioned it being a smooth, fluid movement; but ... it was more like step 1) pose with foot out, step 2) put airplane in opposite hand, step 3) throw airplane. Practice makes perfect, and one day it will be a smooth, fluid movement!
We tried to fly our planes and get them to land on the runway, but those planes seemed to have a mind of their own and only once did a plane actually land on the runway properly, of course I was so excited that I forgot to get a picture. We did have a few that "landed" on the outside lines of the runway.
Next we learned how to fly our helicopter. We learned that our helicopters needed to be thrown up toward the sky in an arch for them to fly and twirl down to the ground.
One of the helicopters even landed on the runway. Time for cheers and celebrating.There were lots of "Woo-hoo" and "YEA!"s.
Flying airplanes and helicopters was more difficult that the students had thought. So as a reward we had some free play time and I was treated to a rock concert.
Homework consisted of three worksheets and a family project. The first worksheet was from a Hello Reader book I have called "Let's Visit the Airport" by Scholastic. The assignment was for the student to find 6 silly things on the Mix up Airport picture. The second was to match the helicopters by tracing the lines. Worksheet from http://www.first-school.ws/t/ap/helicopter_ap1.html. The third was a dot-to-dot picture of a helicopter from http://www.first-school.ws/t/ap/helicopter_dot_to_dot10.htm. The family project was for the family to to to http://www.10paperairplanes.com/ and make some paper airplanes. Trying different styles of airplane to see which ones fly the best.
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