The History of Flight is a unit study that takes your children on a journey from the early days of aviation all the way to NASA and its flight innovations. Written for grades 2-4, the unit is intended to last about four weeks.

The goals of the unit are to help the student understand the history of flight (both airplane and space travel) and become familiar with the biographies of famous aviators, while also learning about the principles of flight. Children will also discover how flight can be used to further God's Kingdom.

Each week's activities are clearly laid out, with four days of activities, a vocabulary list, fifth day field trip ideas, and suggestions for adding older children to the study. Even though the daily activities include some language arts, math, science, history, and art, the author suggests that you keep up with regular math and language arts studies during the unit.

In the Appendix, Mrs. Kargbo has provided four worksheets and a set of directions to go along with five of the suggested activities. All other resources come in the form of books and activity books that you must find at the library or buy. Many are easily found at the library, such as biographies of famous people and paper airplane directions. Others are more specific and may or may not be easily found. Some, such as Your Story Hour Tapes, missionary stories, astronaut food, and a Dover coloring book, will most likely need to be purchased.

Like most unit studies, this one is very adaptable if you are unable to get your hands on a particular resource. If you'd like to follow the unit as intendd, you'll have to be willing to search out or buy several resources. On the positive side, using all the extras makes for a very thorough and interesting study.

The author suggests keeping a notebook for all the worksheets, diagrams, reports, pictures, etc., that will be accumulated during the study. And there are very simple directions for a timeline that would fit right into the child's notebook.

Each day of the unit holds something different. One day might involve reading a biography and writing a report, while another day might include doing a science experiment and writing definitions. I found the unit to be very research-centered, with writing, discussion, and hands-on activities sprinkled in for good measure. A couple of website links and movie suggestions have been included as well.

If your children are interested in the history of flight, I believe you'll find this unit easy to use. And if you are able to find the entire list of extra resources, your children will finish the unit having gained much information.

Product review by Cindy West, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, March 2008