Numeracy

Family Maths Challenge

Exploring mathematics as a family can be lots of fun! Over the next few weeks I will be providing you with a maths challenge to complete as a family. These activities are simple and fun to do and involve a lot of different mathematics skills. 

Paper Planes Challenge

This challenge encourages you and your family to think about the maths involved in the design and construction of paper planes. By making paper planes and testing them to see how far they can go you will learn about geometry, measurement and data displays. Construct a squad of paper planes and estimate how far each plane will fly!

The Challenge

1. Give each person in your family who is involved in this challenge a piece of A4 paper.

2. Collect the following: a pair of scissors (for some plane designs), a ruler to help with folding (optional), a tape measure to measure flight distance (optional); a stopwatch to measure flight time (optional); and textas to decorate your designs (optional).

3. Start designing and making paper planes. You can find many different templates online.

4. Even though you are competing with other family members to see whose plane can fly the farthest, talk with each other about the positives, negatives and interesting points of each design to help make everyone’s plane better.

5. Once everyone is satisfied with their plane, draw a table (see example below) where each person records an estimation of how far their plane might fly and how long their plane might stay in the air. Think about units of measurement that could best be used for distance – would metres, centimetres or millimetres be best? Think about units of measurement that could best be used to record flight time. Do you think hours, minutes or seconds would be best?

6. Launch your planes.

7. Grab a camera to capture images or video of your planes.

8. Reflect: who in your family made the plane that flew the furthest? Who in your family made the nearest estimations regarding their plane’s flight distance and time in the air?

Feel free to email some photos of your wonderful creations to me (ldrury@hfdoveton.catholic.edu.au) and I will add a few to the next newsletter!

Lea Drury

Mathematics Leader   

Activity source: The Victorian Maths Challenge http://vmc.global2.vic.edu.au/