Helicopter Activities for Kids

I love taking my kids to new and different places, so we recently went to visit a local helicopter museum.  The kids had a great time looking at the different types of helicopters, and they made up a very complicated game that involved moving between all the helicopters that were available for them to climb in and out out.  Who knew there were so many “bad guys” at the helicopter museum!

When we got home I thought we could extend the experience by doing some projects based on what we’d seen.  I’ve definitely noticed that planning an activity that matches up with an outing helps the kids to remember the outing better, and most of the time I can manage it without them realizing they are accidentally learning something.

When we got home it was time for lunch and while the kids ate we watched some youtube videos about how helicopters work.  It was fun to hear the kids commenting during the videos, “Oh that’s what those things are called,” and “Now we know what those pedals do!”

A quick google image search came up with lots of helicopter crafts to do with my two young nieces.  I cut out a circle, a rectangle, and a triangle for their helicopter parts, and let them choose two craft sticks.  We talked about the shapes and colors before gluing them on the paper, and the girls loved sticking down the fluffy clouds.

For my older son, I had him write out the word helicopter going down the side of a piece of paper.  Then I had him scan through the photos of different signs I had taken pictures of at the museum to find words that had to do with helicopters.  Of course it would be just as easy to do this using a book about helicopters (or even a web page).  After he was done I let him print out two helicopter photographs to add to his paper.

Next, I had the kids cut out paper helicopters printed from the template on this website.  We didn’t do any well thought out experiments with them, but the kids fun making observations about which kind of helicopters spun better.  We tried making them out of different types of paper, as well as adding paperclips to the bottom, and bending the rotors at different angles.  Although if I’m honest it was probably standing on the kitchen table to drop the copters that excited the kids the most!

I liked these helicopter activities because they were appropriate for different ages of children – whether you are having “H” day in preschool or teaching 4th graders about lift and drag.