Memories of a kindergarten airplane inquiry: “What are airplanes like?”

During our previous inquiry about gems, we wrote a letter to a pilot to ask for a helicopter ride to a volcano. 

Although he couldn’t take us to a volcano, the pilot sent us a package of airplane postcards, stickers, and pilot wings, along with photos of helicopters and airplanes! Everyone was THRILLED. A student said, “We should do an airplane inquiry!” 

Amber and I had already noticed that many of our students were becoming fascinated with airplanes because they’d recently been making Lego helicopters and jets, but the gifts and photos from the pilot really turned up the excitement factor. Thus began a six-week-long inquiry about airplanes, during which time we had SO much fun transforming our classroom into an airport and playing and learning as much as we could about planes.

As always, at the get-go, we filled our book baskets with fiction and nonfiction books about airplanes. Based on what students saw in the books and what they knew from personal experience, they created a plan to turn part of our classroom into an airplane. It would need a ‘galley’ (where flight attendants would do their work), a ‘cockpit’ (with seats and controls for both a pilot and copilot - did you know the steering wheel in an airplane is called a ‘yoke’?), a cabin area for the passengers, as well as an engine, wires, and other mechanical parts to make the airplane work. The passengers would need luggage, passports, and tickets. The airport would need security guards.

Based on the students’ plans, Amber and I set up the bare bones of an airplane and airport and then we worked with the students to finish making it as realistic as possible. What resulted were memorable days filled with rich, purposeful, collaborative, imaginative play (not to mention countless opportunities to make meaningful cross-curricular connections to math, literacy, problem-solving and innovation, and more). The photos below will tell the whole story.

(Working on a plan)

(The bare bones set-up - galley behind the curtain, passenger seating and cockpit in front of it)

(Making tickets and corresponding seat numbers)

(Creating menus for in-flight snack options with pictures, labels, and prices…What snack would you choose: Pizza, broccoli, cherries, macaroni, or watermelon?!)

(Painting the exterior - First, a team of students looked through books to find the best design options and presented their top 5 choices to the class - red and white, black, yellow, yellow and red, or red, black, and white. We did a survey and made a graph to determine that our plane would be yellow.)

(Making controls for the cockpit - great opportunity to review shapes, letters, sight words, and practise printing numbers)

(Making passports - including a picture of the passenger, their age, their birthday, and their height in cubes.)

Finally, everything was ready for us to play!!

First, you pack a suitcase. (It’s fun to practise folding!) Don’t forget your passport!

Next, you go to the airport and wait until it’s your departure time. (We learned about telling time to the ‘o’clock’).

While you wait, you might look at books or do some ‘business work’ on a laptop. (Side note: we made the laptops using small storage containers and sponge pieces with letters glued on for keys - the screen is a mini ‘word wall’ to practise typing sight words.) 

One group of students was on their way to Antarctica to stop bad guys from stealing penguins, and while they waited at the airport, they used these laptops to furiously send emails to the bad guys demanding that they stop!

When it’s time, you go through airport security, including the metal detector.

You get a stamp in your passport and get a ticket with your seat number. These passengers are heading to Canada (C for Canada).

Find your seat, then wait for take-off!

The pilot and co-pilot make sure their controls match. They turn the speed dials (vertical number line) up to the speed they want to go. They choose a place on the globe by picking a letter that they see. They find the circle dial with that letter and point the arrow at it. Then they decide on a number between 0-100 (horizontal number line), to represent how far away the destination is. They set the abacus beads to that number, and then they take off!

When you’re flying, you can take the menus out of the seat-back pockets to choose a snack to buy. Find the right coin (penny, nickel, dime, or quarter) to pay for the snack when the flight attendants come. You can also look at the magazines in the seat-back pockets!

When there are mechanical problems, the aircraft mechanics work hard to fix them. They fix broken wires. They make Lego tools (including screwdrivers, wrenches, drills, and cameras) and Lego parts for replacement (including new batteries and engines). It was fascinating and amazing to listen to the mechanics’ conversations. They described detailed problems to each other, built complex tools to accomplish specific tasks, and made careful plans to fix all problems.

Amber painted an incredible sky mural, and the kids filled the sky with little airplanes and birds. We used the mural to practise using positional language - words like above, below, in front, behind, and beside - to describe relative locations of different things we could see in the sky. We also made two class books with it, and students used it as a backdrop for fun Lego play. (The kids made the cityscape below it, and that created a great opportunity to talk about shapes, and to practise measuring height using a metre stick).

The airplane fun spilled out of the classroom into our outdoor learning times, too. There was time for lots of imaginative outdoor play about planes, and we always recorded our memories in our outdoor learning journals.

Our outdoor airplane. On the far left, students are ‘refuelling’ by filling a hole (fuel compartment) with small snowballs (fuel). At the front is a team making a ‘snow volcano’ - the destination for that morning’s trip. The student sitting in a hole toward the right is the pilot in the cockpit. The student holding a large snowball (suitcase) is carrying it to the luggage compartment. Those standing at the top are passengers getting ready to fly.

(Clearing the runway)

(Loading the luggage)

(Fixing the wing)

(Replacing the engine)

One other facet of our outdoor learning experiences throughout this inquiry . . .

Someone noticed a nest in a tree one morning. He said there might be birds inside, which led to ongoing discussions about similarities and differences between birds and airplanes. 

To try to lure the birds out of the nest, we made bird feeders. We tried to find seeds around our school yard in places where we’d found seeds in the fall, but it was very difficult to find any in winter. 

We realized it must be difficult for birds to find food in winter, too. We learned that birds need food for energy, just like airplanes need fuel for energy to fly. So we filled our bird feeders with bird seed from a store. 

The next day, we checked on our bird feeders and were shocked to discover they’d been ripped off the tree, emptied of seeds, broken, and buried in snow. 

It was a mystery - the case of the broken bird feeders! We drew pictures of our theories about what had happened and drew design plans to build a better bird feeder. The kids said the new bird feeder needed to be in a new location, made of stronger materials, with a fence around it, painted brown to look like a tree, covered in leaves and sticks for camouflage, with signs to deter criminals who might try to break it again. We set up our birdfeeder 2.0 with much more success!

OH! Some kids also wanted to make kites because they can fly like airplanes, so on one particularly windy day, we did that and had loads of fun with them.

When some students wanted to have a paper airplane contest outside, someone said the snow would make their paper airplanes soggy. So, as a fun way to end off our airplane inquiry, we brought out popsicle sticks so the kids could design little wooden airplanes to use in a flying contest. We measured the distance each airplane could fly and compared the distances on a number line.

And with that, we wrapped up our airplane inquiry. The kids took their little toy airplanes home, along with the wonderful memories we’d made!