Now that it is Autumn we are noticing lots of falling leaves, and also some conkers, sycamore keys (helicopters) and ash keys (helicopters). We wondered why the seeds are called helicopters? First of all we tried flying them. They fluttered a little, but didn't look like helicopters until we separated each helicopter from the others. Then the single seed twisted and flew in the air just like a real helicopter.
We discussed lots of different things that fly, then looked up a book about flying to see did we forget anything.
Next we made our own helicopters. Teacher had the template, and before we each had our own helicopter we talked about all the shapes we could see in the template. There was one strange shape, but we found 5 rectangles in the helicopter, 4 small ones made out of one bigger rectangle. We know that rectangles have 4 sides, 2 bigger than the other 2. 
Next we tried flying our helicopters in the classroom. We found that our helicopters fly much better when they are a bit heavier, so we put paper clips on the helicopters and flew them again. Much better! We figured out how to change the direction that the helicopters spin in. We can do this by folding the blades of the helicopter the opposite way to the way we had them folded at the start. Lastly we took our helicopters outside to see how they fly outside. They flew much further and much faster when the wind helped to fly them.
Friday, September 25th, 2009Teacher brought in more helicopters. One works when the balloon is blown up. The helicopter blades spin and the helicopter rises to the ceiling. Very exciting! The other one is a hand flown helicopter. We all had a turn at this one. It spins when you set it off by rubbing your hands together with the helicopter between them. It was hard to get it flying, but we were able after a few turns each!
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