Pilot Visit

My brother-in-law visited my class today. We are doing a study/theme on Flight (you can find Flight themed activities at http://www.creativepreschoolcurriculum.com/Flight.html) and he's a pilot. We are about 5 weeks into the study, so the children are familiar with a lot of the terminology as well as some of the physics and major concepts behind flight. They were very excited to hear what he had to say.

It's amazing how discussing something the children are interested in can really capture their attention. There are 17 children in my class and large group time can often be a struggle. We have many children with behavioral, emotional, or developmental problems and it can be very hard to manage the group and maintain their interest. We had 13 children in class today and all except for one sat at circle for nearly a full half hour.

My brother-in-law brought in pictures of what the control panel looks like in the cockpit of the planes that he flies. The children asked what each button, knob, dial and lever did. They listened to the pilot's responses even when they didn't fully understand the explanations. Children who are normally quiet at large group time raised their hands for a turn to talk to the pilot.

Yesterday, the children wrote out a list of questions to ask our visitor. We have been working on the difference between a question and a statement, but it's still a tough concept for many of our children to understand. A couple of questions we were able to form were: Why do airplanes have windows? How do the wings work? How do the wheels go up? and Do you have to go to school to learn how to become a pilot? All in all some pretty good questions, especially when combined with them asking about all the different gadgets in the pictures our guest brought.

Maybe it's the uniform, maybe it's his size, maybe it's simply having a stranger in the classroom, but whatever magical thing came over our class should be repeated over and over again! It's hard to determine how much young children gain from a discussion of something as abstract as flight or being a pilot, but we're satisfied that the children in our class will each pull something valuable out of the experience. Thank you so much for taking the time to drive out and talk to our class Brian!