If you’ve ever taken kids on a 6-hour flight, you know that’s hard work. Luckily, today kids got to fly without any screaming infants, spilled drinks or landing earaches. And no iPads, either. Bonus!
In Epic Air Traffic Control, the kids turned one of the most ordinary images – a number line – into a neon numbered runway. They strapped LEDs onto popsicle sticks to create glowing aircraft, then rolled dice to move their planes along the runway and into the night sky.
This gave younger pilots counting practice, while older pilots crossed runways at the number 12 and used addition, subtraction and factoring to avoid near misses!
Even if you’re not flying anywhere, you can learn about the planes flying right over your head. Go to Flightradar24 and zoom the map to your area.
- Click on any plane to find out its departure and destination, its current altitude and its flight path.
- If you hear a really loud one overhead, run to Flightradar24 and see how close it was!
- Zoom in on a major airport and watch planes buzz like bees around the terminals.
Then go galactic and track the International Space Station! Visit NASA’S Spot the Station, enter your state and the nearest town listed, and see all the times the ISS will be visible to you. If your kids love this, many astronomy apps like StarWalk show satellites on the map alongside the stars. The lesson from all this: The sky’s the limit!
