Parts of an Airplane

Sebastian always loves to draw and label things. (He spent his free time drawing this hyper-accurate plane mural one day.) He knows the parts of a plane far better than I do. But, for the benefit of the rest of us, we spent a day learning about the control surfaces of an airplane. I will never again be bored when I have to sit looking out the window at the wing of a plane! There are lots of interesting things going on on those wings! :)

This site shows how to make a paper glider that uses flaps and elevators to move in different ways. It's a good hands-on way to experiment with how and why these surfaces affect the plane the way they do.

Here's Abe giving a brief demonstration of that.

Here is a worksheet for filling in the parts of an airplane, and what they do.

And here is the answer key for that worksheet.