Parachutes...parachutes....parachutes!

First grade had a fun discussion of all the things that use air for recreation. We talked about sailboats, planes, floaty toys, jets, kites......and.....PARACHUTES! I asked them what would happen if I wanted to go up in an airplane and jump out to see the world, what would I need to keep me safe? Everyone said a parachute. I showed them a video of a friend of mine who jumped out of an airplane to go skydiving. They saw how the parachute kept him safe. We had a discussion of what he thought happened with the parachute and how it worked. Students came up with great ideas. They suggested that the air gets trapped under the chute and allows them to drift slowly. They were correct. As a class we created our very own parachutes. We threw them in the air in our classroom but our skydivers kept getting caught in the powerlines in our classroom (fishing line that we hang artwork on). We decided it would be better to have our skydivers fly from the top of the balcony on the third floor and fall down to the second floor. Each student got a chance to let their skydiver go from the top and the rest of class counted the seconds it took for our skydiver to land on the second floor. Congratulations, Savonne! Her skydiver had the longest flight!