Design and Technology

Design And Technology Week

 in Class Four / Class One / Class Three / Class Two / Design and Technology / Whole School by

What an amazing and busy time we had last week! The whole school took part in different Design and Technology projects. Class 1 were developing their cutting skills and exploring a range of different junk modelling materials. Class 2 were learning about fruit and vegetables, using their senses to explore them and then creating their own smoothies. Class 3 explored how to use a simple pneumatic system to make box monsters. Class 4 were learning about different ways to join fabric including different stictches, before designing and making their own soft toys. Each class enjoyed learning new skills, acquiring new knowledge and had opportunities to design, make and evaluate their work.

Class 4’s Soft Toys

Class 3’s Monster Boxes

Class 2’s Smoothies

Class 1’s Junk Modelling

Wheels and Axles

 in Class Two / Design and Technology by

Class 2 have ended the year in style with a fantastic design and technology unit called ‘Wheels and Axles’. During this unit we have learnt about the parts that make a wheeled vehicle move and then experimented with ways to create axles, wheels and axle holders and how to attach them to a chassis. Finally, we designed and made our own moving vehicles. This project has been a great way for the children to develop their resilience and problem solving skills.

Scrawlers!

 in Class Four / Class Three / Design and Technology by

What can you make if you have a cup, some sellotape, felt-tip pens, a motor, a rubber, a battery and some crocodile clips? That’s exactly the question which was posed to class 4 last week! It wasn’t much to go on, but then they were given a prototype of a “Scrawler”

A Scrawler is an automatic drawing robot! A motor on top of the robot spins with an offset weight, causing it to vibrate. As it vibrates, the pens making up the “legs” of the robot wobble across the page and draw patterns as they go.

Class 4 wasted no time in taking the prototype to pieces to discover how it worked. With no further instructions, just some reverse-engineering, small teams got to work building a Scrawler of their very own!

Once we had perfected and tested our own versions, we took them apart for a further challenge. Was it possible to teach Class 3 how to make one of their own, without using our hands? That meant no pointing or touching, and no getting frustrated when somebody else was doing the wrong thing! With only 20 minutes to complete the project time was not on our side, but I think the gallery below proves our success!

Electric Posters in DT

 in Class Three / Design and Technology by

Class 3 have been bringing together this year’s history and science knowledge in producing a special electric poster for a museum display to inform visitors about the Romans. They considered where to place a light bulb to draw people’s attention to an aspect of their poster – some are on the titles, others incorporated into their illustrations and others by their facts. It was great to see pupils helping each other to problem solve when circuits didn’t work as expected – this is certainly an important aspect of the job of a designer and engineer.

 

A Shocking Series of Lessons

 in Class Four / Design and Technology / Science by

Class 4 have been getting stuck into their science topic this term by constructing electrical circuits! We’ve learned what a circuit needs in order to function, we’ve built a range of different circuits and we’ve also tested the impact of making changes to our circuits.

Once we’ve learned all we can, we will be using our Design and Technology skills to then build a “Steady Hand” game to take home. Take a look at the gallery below for a sneak-peek into our process!

Anglo Saxon Settlements

 in Class Three / Computing / Design and Technology / History by

Class 3 have been really enjoying their history topic all about Anglo Saxons. They have worked very hard on a special homework task over the past two weeks. After researching Anglo Saxon villages, they set about presenting their research in creative ways – some made models, others drew pictures and some created digital representations using Minecraft. An amazing array of wonderful work was proudly shown to the whole school in Celebration Assembly on Friday. Well done all and thank you for the extra time and effort that has undoubtedly gone into your work.

 

Class 3’s Catapults

 in Class Three / Design and Technology by

Mr Dean has been working with Class 3 for a design technology project all about catapults. We have used lolly sticks and elastic bands to create the frame and had great fun pinging pom poms with our finished catapults.

Great patience, dexterity and following of instructions shown.

Super Space in EYFS!

 in Art / Class One / Design and Technology / Geography / History / Science by

EYFS are coming to the end of their super space topic for this half term. We started with the famous story “Whatever Next!” and enjoyed role-playing a journey to space and having a picnic on the moon. Learning about some of the planets was top of Reception’s ‘What I want to learn’ list and after finding out some interesting facts, they then designed their own using a ‘wash’ effect with felt tips and paintbrushes dipped in water. We thought carefully about the colour of our planets and what they were made from – gas, rock or ice. Constellations were also a big hit; we found out that some constellations can only be seen in certain parts of the world and then recreated some famous ones on black card using chalk. We spent two weeks in total creating our own model of the solar system using papier mache and adding details to each planet; lots of sticky fun! We learnt about gravity and watched videos of astronauts on board the International Space Station, finding out that the further away from earth you get, the less gravity there is. We have enjoyed lots of child-led opportunities in provision including puffy moon painting, making craters in moon dough, designing aliens on the light panel and baking cake pops. We definitely have some budding astronauts in the making!

STEM morning in Class 3

 in Class Three / Design and Technology / Science by

Class 3 have had a wonderful morning exploring and being engineers!

They came up with lots of ideas about what engineering was. This included engineers make complicated things, they build robots, they help other people, they build and fix things.

Our first challenge was cutting an A4 piece of paper so you can fit your entire body through it. Lots of perseverance and experimenting but no luck. We thought a partner might be useful, so we paired up and hey presto – lots of success! Engineers often work in teams to help solve problems just like this.

We then were set off to build a waterproof and windproof house for one of the three little pigs. Each group had a bucket with a range of materials and, despite a bit of trepidation, all our finished products stood up to their final wind and rain shower test and the pig stayed dry!