IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Our planning begins!

As you know, our class has been fascinated with the idea of flight and airplanes and we have been incorporating this concept into our classroom on a regular basis. As part of our airplane project, our class has decided to build a large airplane in our very own classroom! On Wednesday morning, the kids were greeted by the suprise of a large refrigerator box and big blue platform to inspire their building. They were so excited about the possibiliities and wanted to jump right into building. However, we have discovered that airplane building takes a lot of planning. First, we had to decide if we wanted to build an airplane or a helicoptor. Next, we had to decide how big to create it. Did we want something that everyone could fit in? Or just a few friends at a time? Would this airplane truly fly or would we create it to play with?

After discussing some of the details, we started talking about how to figure out how large to make our airplane. Our class agreed it would be best to create a plane that fit everyone in it, so we had to figure out how many kids were in our class. We counted 20. Then we had to figure out the best way to make 20 kids fit inside something. Did we want to cluster together in seats? Or did we want to have one, long plane? Lucas brought up the fact that planes he knew of usually had a couple rows. We eventually decided on two rows. Next, we had to figure out how many kids would go in each row. We started lining children up where we plan to build the airplane and started counting children in each row. How could we make the rows even? Regan came up with a great idea. “Ten in each row!” I asked her how she knew. “Because ten plus ten equals twenty!” We tried out Regan’s idea and it worked- two equal rows! After lining up the kids in their rows, we had the idea to mark the floor with tape to show how large we needed our plane to be. If you have visited our room lately, you may see how big we plan to make this plane! We are going to need lots of help with materials- primarily cardboard, cardboard boxes, and duct tape. As we start to accumulate more materials we will sort them and then begin to make a building plan.

"How many rows?"

The plane is marked off!

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