Alien Invasion!
Year 2 have been making moving aliens during DT Week. The children have enjoyed designing their aliens, creating them using cardboard and finding ways to join parts together. I’m sure you’ll agree, they are out of this world!
Design and Technology
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Open in new tab Marble Run
For today’s activity, you might need to save up a few bits and pieces from the recycling box. Keep an eye out for any kitchen roll cardboard, toilet roll cardboard and cereal boxes and save them to make your very own MARBLE RUN! This is one of my favourite things to make and I’ve done it with different year groups over the years. It will definitely use all of your Design and Technology skills and it is a great activity to do in a team so work with your brothers and sisters.
First, you might want to research different ideas about how to make your own marble run to find out what equipment to use. Draw out your design in your exercise book including labels and a description. If you are feeling particularly creative, you may wish to give your marble run a theme! After you have built your marble run (and you might need to start again a few times to make it work) make sure you evaluate your design. Does it work? What makes it so good? Is there anything that could be improved? As always, any photos, please email through to [email protected]
Tallest Tower Challenge
Good morning, Cannon Park! For today’s challenge, I’d like you to build the tallest tower you can. You may wish to use Lego, Duplo, wooden blocks or even the blocks from Jenga – whatever you can find (with your grown-ups permission of course) to build your tower.
Key Questions
Would it help to plan our your tower?
Can you build a tower taller than your height?
How big is your tower? How could you measure the height?
How many blocks have you used?
How did you make sure it doesn’t collapse? Think about a strong base.
How many attempts did it take? What did you change each time?
You will definitely need our school values for this challenge, particularly teamwork if you’re working with a brother or sister! To extend your learning, research famous tall buildings around the world and create a factfile.
As always, send any photos to [email protected] if you are happy for them to go on the website.
Good luck!
Salt Dough
Another day, another activity! Making salt dough is a really fun and easy activity for children and the chances are you will have all of the ingredients in the cupboard ready to go. Children, if you’re reading, you’ll need to ask an adult’s permission! Children will love using their imaginations to create all sorts of exciting objects (although simple shapes do seem to work best) and hours of fun painting their creations, but do take care to remind little ones that the salt dough is not edible.
Ingredients:
- 250g of plain flour
- 125g of salt
- 125ml of water
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to its lowest setting and line a baking sheet with baking parchment.
2. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the water and stir until it comes together into a ball.
3. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and shape into your chosen model. You can roll it out and cut out shapes, numbers or letters using biscuit cutters, or make any kind of model you can think of. We made some fruit and veg shapes plus cupcakes for a teddy bear’s picnic.
4. Put your finished items on the lined baking sheet and bake for 3 hrs or until solid.
5. Leave to cool and then paint.
Top tips
• Simple designs work best, as the dough isn’t sturdy until baked. If your child can’t decide between a tall giraffe or a flatter gecko, for example, steer them towards the gecko. Also bear in mind that the bigger/fatter the model, the longer it will take to harden in the oven.
• Try using silicone baking sheets to roll out the shapes without the need for extra flour. This saves on cleaning up your kitchen. Silicone sheets are also a quick way to bake without needing baking parchment.
• If you want to make salt dough ‘cupcakes’ like we did, pop your shaped dough into cupcake cases before you put it in the oven and bake the pretend cakes in cupcake trays.
The dough then sets firmly stuck to the paper cases, ready for painting with pretend icing, cherries or sprinkles.
Thank you to the BBC for this idea.
Investigating forces and mechanisms.
This afternoon, Year 5 were challenged to make a working shaduf.
A shaduf, also spelled shadoof, is a hand-operated device for lifting water, invented in ancient times and still used in India, Egypt, and some other countries to irrigate land. Typically it consists of a long, tapering, nearly horizontal pole mounted like a seesaw.
They had to use their knowledge of forces and mechanisms to investigate the best way to build one with the materials available…
Anderson Shelters
As part of our WWII topic, Year 6 have been learning about how Anderson Shelters were used to protect families from air raids. This afternoon, the children started the process of constructing individual shelters in a fun Design & Technology lesson. There was a lot of sawing, gluing and precision involved. Amazing effort from all the children, we cannot wait to see the final structures.
Cannon Park Superheroes
Year 1 have had an amazing time evaluating their superhero capes today! They investigated different ways they could attach the ribbon to their capes so they could wear them. They showed all the school values, especially enjoyment.
Making Smoothies
This afternoon, Year 5 worked with Aspens staff to create fruit smoothies using their pedal power! Healthy School Week has started with a bang!
Success at Schneider Electric
Year 2 & 6 visited Schneider Electric this week for an engineering competition. The children had to compete in a variety of vehicle-based challenges including ramp climbs, distance events and interviews discussing their designs with real life engineers. A Year 6 team from Cannon Park won the Best Engineer award and Year 2 were awarded a runner up prize. Despite the rain, a fantastic day of learning was enjoyed by all.
