Using National Aviation Day to Teach Your Child About Flight

National Aviation Day is a great opportunity to get kids interested in aviation!

National Aviation Day is one of the more underrated holidays in the United States but it is becoming more popular as the years go by. The holiday centers around the advances made in aviation and falls every year on August 19th. This is the birthday of aviation icon Orville Wright. Orville and his brother Wilbur made massive advances in aviation powered flight and have a beautiful memorial at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in KittyHawk, North Carolina, the site of their first flight. Although National Aviation Day is on Orville’s birthday, the holiday is really about aviation as a whole.

Using National Aviation Day to Teach Your Child About Flight

Aviation Day History

This federally observed holiday was introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt way back in 1939. Although the holiday is observed federally, it is not considered a public holiday in the United States. The Holiday has been around for a very long time and is not to be confused with another big aviation holiday….Wright Brothers Day on December 17th. National Aviation Day is supposed to be a broad aviation appreciation day whereas the Wright Brothers specifically are celebrated on Dec. 17th. Despite this, many people across the United States see the Wright Brothers as primary inventors of the airplane and get them confused.

The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers are credited with the world’s first airplane with controls to steer to fly successfully. Despite this, there are many historians that question this as there were others that claimed the same around that time. What is known is that the Wright Brothers were instrumental in building, inventing and perfecting powered aircraft at a time when doing so was quite dangerous. Can you imagine being the first person to fly a plane that may or may not work? That had to be terrifying for the pilots and showed incredible bravery in the field of science and aviation.

Kids and National Aviation Day

These days, schools are participating and teaching more and more on the subject. They generally will dedicate some classroom subjects to the day and engage children on what they know. Amelia Earhart, the Wright Brothers and countless other pioneers in the world of flight are profiled and the basics of aviation history are discussed. It is particularly a good time to talk to kids about the various things one can do in the field of aviation.

Although National Aviation Day is not a huge holiday just yet, it has grown over the years. For years it seemed to suffer from a lack of interest but has been making a comeback thanks to popular culture and new advances in flight. The popularity of flying will only increase in the coming years with a renewed interest in the aviation field.