Flight

We've been reading The Glorious Flight across the Channel with Louis Bleriot by Alice and Martin Provensen. This is another Five in a Row book.

There has been so much to do with this book.

Geography

We found France and England on a map and made English and French flags which were waved at appropriate points in the story.

There are many clues from the pictures that the story starts in France and we looked for these.

Cooking is always popular so we borrowed A world of Recipes: France by Sue Townsend from the library. We did make Nicoise salad but it disappeared before photos were taken.

History

The book is all about history and there is so much to explore.

• the flight was 102 years ago. The timeline was useful for this.
• the picture of a car was fun to examine for the many, many differences from modern cars
• Bleriot's aeroplanes had Roman numerals. We talked about this and wrote them out although I think I would be kidding myself if I said that either child can use Roman numerals. More an introduction to the fact that they exist!
• the Edwardian clothing
• the strange aeroplanes

Language
We read some other books which were , at least vaguely related to flight.

The lighthouse keeper's picnic by Ronda and David Armitage features a hot air balloon.

Roaring Rockets by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker is a book that Mr Exuberance asks for again and again. Fun rhyme and plenty to talk about.

Madeline in London by Ludwig Bemelmans features a more modern flight from Paris to London.

Percy's bumpy ride by Nick Butterworth is the story of Percy the Park Keeper and his amazing flying lawn mower.

Art

The children painted, glittered and scraped some balloon shapes which we made into hot air balloons. They are now flying up our stairs.

Science

We only dipped our toes into what could be done around this book.

We mainly talked about air flow and air resistance using

• blowing between two flags
• dropping a scrunched up and unfolded piece of paper
• different designs for paper aeroplanes

Such a fun week, for me as well as the children, and there is another activity we hope to do at the beginning of next week.

This is linked to 5-a-Day books. Take a look for many more book ideas.