Make a Paper Helicopter - Fun Activity, Lesson Plan, Challenges, Science for Kids

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Fun Flight Lesson Plans and Activities for Kids

Check out our range of fun flight lesson plans that feature interesting flight related facts and cool activities for kids.

Make a Paper Helicopter

Make a paper helicopter and enjoy some fun challenges to test your designs. This activity will help teach kids about important flight concepts such as lift. Use the teaching ideas suggested in the lesson plan and have fun teaching students about helicopters and other flight related topics.

Introduction:

An important concept to do with flying involves rapidly pushing air out of the way and lowering the air pressure.
Higher pressure underneath a low pressure area gives lift.
The helicopter shape we'll make in the following activity is also found in nature. Lots of seeds have 'wings' so they can float to new areas and sprout. One example is the sycamore tree seed.

Activity:

For this activity you’re going to need the following:

Paper or card
A ruler
A pencil
Scissors
A stopwatch
Paper clips
A container for the ‘bulls eye’

Instructions:

Cut out a piece of paper or card that has dimensions of around 2cm by 20cm.
Fold the piece of paper in half before bending over the ends to form a T shape.
Attach a paper clip to the bottom of the paper helicopter so it keeps its form while falling to the ground.
Drop it from above your head or while standing on a chair (carefully of course) and it should spiral to the ground.
If you made a good a good helicopter then the blades should spin rapidly, creating lift and allowing the helicopter to fall to the ground slowly.
Try making paper helicopters with slight variations to see how this affects the speed at which its blades spin and how quickly it falls to the ground. What happens if you shorten the helicopter blades?

Challenges:

Use a container as a 'bulls eye' with the challenge being to try and drop your paper helicopter from above and have it accurately land in the container.
Time how long it takes the helicopters to fall to the ground from a certain height with the winner being the person that makes a helicopter that drops to the ground as slowly as possible.
Turn your paper helicopter upside down and drop it, what happens?
Can you make your paper helicopter spin the other way?