Design and Technology: Blog items
Date: 19th Jan 2022 @ 6:53pm
We have enjoyed another No Pen Day in Year 6. Together we started the day by looking at Thunks - thought-provoking statements that we use to generate lots of discussions. During the day we took part in a GPS session outside - we had to find questions hidden around the playground and go to the adults with the answers. We also worked in pairs to look through an arithmetic test with mistakes and discussed together what errors had been made. In the afternoon, we spent time on our DT topic. This involved threading a needle and practising a range of different stitches.
Date: 19th Jan 2022 @ 6:38pm
Today in DT we spent the afternoon practising our stitching skills. This involved being confident to thread a needle and then following tutorials that taught us how to complete 4 different stitches: running stitch, back stitch, overstitch and blanket stitch. In this topic we will be designing and making a mobile phone case and we will be choosing the sticthes that we want to use.
Nursery Architects In the Making!
Date: 18th Jan 2022 @ 5:24pm
Nursery took part in the whole school no pen day by creating a den for a bear. We have been reading the story "Bear's Winter House" and we decided that the bear might like a bit of help to build his next house. The children made brilliant Architects and used a variety of materials to create a den for the bear. The thought carefully about how to attach the materials to make the house stable and didn't give up when the houses fell down! They were great at working together and listened carefully to each others ideas. I would definitely live in a house built by them!
Year 5 Building Frame Structures!
Date: 8th Jan 2022 @ 5:34pm
Upon our return to Year 5, we spent Wednesday afternoon building our own frame structures... out of raw spaghetti!
We spent time as a class looking at beautiful buildings around the world, some that we knew (Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal and London Bridge) and some that we didn't know (The Louvre... in Abu Dhabi and The Centre Pompidou).
Next, we had to design what we wanted to build and explain why we wanted to build a frame structure in the way we had designed.
Then came the hard part! Putting our ideas into practice with just spaghetti and Blu-Tac. This took a lot of teamwork and patience, but it is fair to say we did an excellent job! Year 5 are really looking forward to our Design Technology unit over this next half-term.
Date: 7th Jan 2022 @ 3:29pm
For our WOW we made salt dough and created our own Stone Age jewellery. We scored lines and dots into the salt dough to create patterns. After cooking them for a very long 3 hours, we were able to paint them and turn them into necklaces.
Date: 5th Jan 2022 @ 5:23pm
As an introduction to our new topics in Science, Animals including Humans, and Design Technology Puppets today we created Sock Puppets. Although it was quite tricky to get some of the pieces to stick and figuring out the correct way to work a Sock Puppet the children did brilliantly and showed super perseverance and patience. We are all looking forward to continuing our learning in both Science and Design Technology and are excited to make puppets again later in the term. Well done everyone, they look fabulous!
Date: 14th Dec 2021 @ 7:40pm
As the final part of our DT journey all about structures, today we made our final product.
Firstly we talked about different attachment techniques we may use to make our design strong and sturdy. We then learnt how we were going to bring all our previous learning together to create our playground structure design from the materials we detailed on our designs. We showed lots of perseverance and determination throughout our learning!
Date: 9th Dec 2021 @ 7:40pm
This week we have explored freestanding structures in DT, through looking at familiar playground equipment. We began by exploring existing different types of playground equipment. We talked about the different pieces of equipment we enjoy playing on at a playground and why we like them. Looking at all these different types of equipment we discussed the questions...
What is it called?
What is it used for?
How do you use it?
What is it made from?
We then drew and labelled our favourite piece of equipment.
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!
