Design and Technology: Blog items
Do You Want To Make a Reindeer?
Date: 9th Dec 2021 @ 5:11pm
We love a bit of Christmas craft in nursery and this week we have certainly been getting very crafty! We have made Christmas cards, salt dough pots, designed christmas jumpers and made Santa and reindeer faces! Have a look at our pictures to see how you could make your own paper plate reindeer face. The chidlren had to apply just the right amount of paint so that it covered the whole plate but didn't make it too soggy. Then they had to use their understanding of positional langauge to make sure they put the eyes, nose and antlers in the right place and also use their knowledge of number to make sure they counted out the right amount of each of these. They also talked about reindeer, what they do, how they fly and even tried to remember all of the reindeer names. What a lot of learning from a simple paper plate!
Date: 5th Dec 2021 @ 11:43am
During their time in nursery, the children will become familiar with 2D and 3D shapes and begin to use mathematical language to describe them e.g. sides, corners, straight, flat and round. The best way for children to become familair with different shapes is by exploring them and using them in different contexts. Our children have been matching shapes, building with shapes, creating paintings using shapes as silhouettes, painting large cardboard shapes and sorting shapes. They have also followed the outline of different shapes with buttons and explored 2D shapes outside in shaving foam - there's been a whole lot of shaping going on!
How Do You Make An Alien Spaceship?
Date: 1st Dec 2021 @ 2:35pm
After reading the story "Alien's Love Dinopants" the children designed and made their own alien spaceships out of junk modelling. They were provided with a selection of junk modelling resources including boxes and yoghurt pots. They then decided how to arrange and attach them to create a super duper spaceship!
Date: 19th Nov 2021 @ 4:12pm
As part of our final Forest School session, we spent our time outdoors learning different types of survival skills.
Year 5 made dens out of different materials and learnt how to secure them using a range of knots and understood why it is important to protect ourselves from cold weather whilst out in nature. We then made a fire and understood why different factors such as the wind and types of energies can have an impact on their effectiveness.
To finish our sessions, we made pizza, shortbread and hot chocolate.
We have had such a great time and learnt so much about the outdoors.
Date: 12th Nov 2021 @ 8:12am
In DT today we looked at gears and pulleys and how they work in order to create movement. We learned about gear trains and the direction in which gears go depending on how many gears there are in the train. We also learned about combinations of gears in order to speed up/down the gears.
Date: 3rd Nov 2021 @ 8:28pm
There have been some spooky goings on in Nursery over the last few days as we explored Halloween! We read the story "What's In The Witches Kitchen" By Nick Sharratt which the children loved! They really enjoyed looking at the book together and were great at retelling the story. The witch even left us a bowl of jelly, but it had spiders and bats in it! The chidlren worked really hard to get them out using tweezers! We pratcised our counting by adding 8 legs to scary spiders and worked our fine motor skills by tapping witches fingers in to pumpkins! It really has been quiet a frightful week!
Date: 3rd Nov 2021 @ 9:28am
This week our classrooms were transformed for Halloween. We enjoyed making potions, carving pumpkins, role playing in our haunted house, painting spooky pictures, labelling spooky characters and playing halloween games. Have a look at our super learning.
Date: 5th Oct 2021 @ 7:01pm
After reading the story 'Little Red Hen', Reception decided to bake their own bread but, unlike the story, they all helped each other to do it. Once it had baked in the oven, they all sat down and enjoyed eating their bread together.
They talked about the different ingredients in bread and why they were using a recipe. They discussed how the wheat grew and was then cut and ground at the mill where it turned into flour. All children mixed and kneaded the dough and, after sharing the bread to eat, many of them wanted another piece!
'It tastes warm" Mercedes.
"It is the best bread ever- so crunchy and then soft!" Charlie
'It's yummy!" Amelia
There's A Dragon In Your Book!
Date: 1st Oct 2021 @ 12:17pm
This Week we have been reading the brilliant story "There's A Dragon In Your Book" By Tom Fletcher. This is a great book to share with chilldren as it's really interactive and we had so much fun reading it. The children have had so many experiences linked to the book from putting out the dragons fire to making him some delicious ice cream. They also used their fine motor skills to make dragons with moving parts!
Date: 22nd Sep 2021 @ 12:20pm
The children took the lead with some loose parts play this week! They used the resources in the construction area to create brillaint Robot costumes! Their robot voices were very impressive too!
Date: 16th Sep 2021 @ 4:05pm
In Design Technology, we have been looking at shell structures. We identified that the 3D shapes started out as nets. We spent some time trying to use nets to make our our 3D shapes. It was very tricky but we showed great resilience and perseverance along the way!
Date: 13th Sep 2021 @ 12:22pm
This half-term in Cedar, we are going to be eco warriors!
We started our topic by investigating Miss T's rubbish into what is recyclable or non-recylable. We discussed each item and how some parts of the items weren't and some were so we would have to separate them.
We learned about how must plasic there is in the oceans and seas and what we can do to help. We then used some of Miss T's rubbish to junk model our own sea creatures.
Date: 10th Sep 2021 @ 3:40pm
As an introduction to our new Design Technology topic in which we will be creating healthy fruit snacks we spent the afternoon tasting different fruits such as pineapple, mango, strawberries, kiwi and Honey Dew melon alongside some other common fruits. After tasting the different fruits we came up with some words to describe the look, smell and taste of each fruit such as: sour, sweet, crunchy, delicious, succulent, yummy, round and disgusting. Despite not liking them all, everybody tried a little of everything.
Date: 10th Sep 2021 @ 11:17am
Year 5 took to the water designing and creating their own rivers! They began by working in groups to decide how to create an accurate river that would eventually hold water. Using a range of materials they had to use their own thoughts, ideas and imagination to construct their river - some even added trees and boulders for extra realism! Ultimately, all groups took to the outside learning area where Mr. Taylor would 'test the flow' and pour water to down their creations to see if they held water! This launched our Geography topic of rivers as the children then came inside to look at some real rivers, begin to discuss their features and record their own questions that they would like to answer during the half-term.
Date: 11th Jul 2021 @ 12:03pm
On Friday the nursery children took part in the whole school Heritage Day. We focused on Blackpool Tower and Blackpool Trams. The children really enjoyed finding out about Blackpool Tower and even built their own towers using bricks and straws and playdough!
Date: 9th Jul 2021 @ 8:06pm
Today in DT we created our final playground structure.
We looked back to the design we had created the previous week to recap on what piece of equipment we were going to make, what we needed our equipment to be and the materials and tools we needed to create and decorate our finished product.
We had lots of resources available to create our playground structure and we tried to use them effectively to build a strong and sturdy structure. We we're all very proud of our finished product!
After we had finished we then evaulated our design. We thought about what had gone well with our design, if it was fit for purpose and what we might change if we were to make our design again.
Date: 2nd Jul 2021 @ 7:11pm
During the last two weeks year 1 have enjoyed our final two sessions of Forest School. We were very excited to be able to take part in our last sessions before the summer holidays!
Over the past two weeks we have explored teamwork, resiliance and cooperation through a number of different activities. We also linked our learning to our current topic in DT, structures.
We recapped on the key fundamentals of Forest School, looking after nature, keeping ourselves and others safe and having fun!
During our sessions we matched different colours in nature, made plates of food for fairies, tried fruit growing from the trees, collected 'nectar' for the Queen Bee, toasted marshmallows and ate them!
Date: 17th Jun 2021 @ 8:01am
We started practising our Design Technology skills of sewing, by learning how to thread a needle, knot the end and then we learned how to do a running stitch and a back stitch! For some of us, this was very tricky and for lots of us, we had never ever done this before! It was great to see to much team work, concentration and resilience being shown by the year 3 pupils as well as patience for when the thread was tangled and they needed a little more help.
Date: 10th Jun 2021 @ 6:33pm
Year 5 have been designing and constructing alarms to protect a valuable item. We looked at existing products, learned how to draw circuit diagrams, experimented with different types of switches and learned techniques to join wires. Our final designs used a push to break switch that activated the alarm when the item was removed.
Date: 9th Jun 2021 @ 5:33pm
Reception have been reading the story 'The Three Little Pigs'. We have been very busy acting out the story using puppets, writing about our favourite part of the story, making houses out of cardboard boxes and collaging paper plates to create our favourite characters. We learnt that "bricks are strong" and that is why our houses are built from them!
Date: 20th May 2021 @ 6:35pm
After exploring all existing products and making prototypes of each mechanism, it was time to create our own design! We linked our designs to the story 'Giraffes can't Dance,' and we chose a scene from this book that we would like to bring to life.
We then brought our designs to life by creating our moving picture of a scene from ‘Giraffes can’t Dance!’ We looked back at the designs we had created to check the key elements, including the characters, background and the type of mechanism we wanted to use. We recapped on our key vocabulary, lever, slider, pivot, push, pull, direction, up, down, left and right, and described our desired movement and mechanism to our partner. We reviewed how to make each type of mechanism and the key parts to remember with each one, before beginning to make our moving picture. We all successfully made a moving picture with a combinatnation of levers, sliders and wheels!
Date: 20th May 2021 @ 6:31pm
We began the morning by exploring existing products and introducing our new vocabulary. We read each key word and discussed what they mean. We identified which of our key words – lever, slider, pivot, push, pull, direction, up, down, left and right – fit with each example of the mechanism. We then found examples of levers, sliders and wheels in books. We discussed the way the moving part moves, how does it work and what effect is has.
Our first mechanism to make was a slider! We read the Gingerbread man story and talked about which part we might like to turn into a moving picture! Lots of us said a good part of the story to make would be when the characters chase the Gingerbread man and this is the picture we made! To make a part move in our picture we needed to make a sliding mechanism.
Our second mechanism was a lever! For this mechanism we linked our learning to the story Jack and the Beanstalk. We read and discussed the story and we were then ready to turn part of the story into a moving picture using a lever mechanism.
Our third and final new mechanism technique was a wheel. We read the story Little Red Riding Hood, and discussed that we are going to again turn part of the story into a moving picture using a wheel mechanism!
Shell Structures for Design Technology
Date: 19th May 2021 @ 4:36pm
For our Design Technology day we created our own Shell Structures, after looking at the nets of many different existing product packagings.
Our design brief was to create a lunch box suitable for a Year 3 pupil to take out to a picnic that could carry food. Although we had to create our models in card and paper, we discussed how it would be better for them to be made in plastic so they would be more durable but less eco friendly as plastic pollution is a big problem for the planet.
We discussed how the existing products we had looked at were made from recycleable materials and we used recycled card in our final designs. We found the recycle symbols on most of our existing products.
We completed our designs, made our prototypes and refined our ideas before creating our final product in card. We also learned how to strengthen and stiffen materials using laminating, tubes and corrugation. We had to cut and glue carefully once we had put our bold designs onto our structures. It was very fiddly and tricky but we showed resilience.
Date: 18th May 2021 @ 5:03pm
This week's topic in Reception has been Super Heroes! We have been dressing up, acting out our own narratives, writing and taking it in taking turns playing maths games. We read the story Supertato, wrote about our favourite part of the story and even made our own Supertato!
Take a look at what some of our photos!
Date: 14th May 2021 @ 7:55pm
This afternoon, the children designed their own Medusa inspired hair pieces by creating card linkages, loose pivots and a card lever to create a moving hair piece. The children created their prototypes today which went really well.
