Pebble Award
This term, our Explorers will be using our outdoor areas to develop their large scale building skills. By using a variety of materials such as planks, reels and tyres, the children will be adapting and testing their models then verbally evaluating the best methods, whilst sharing their ideas and achievements.
Having explored small scale bridge building in the classroom. where they used resources such as wooden blocks and lolly sticks, the children are going large and have been begun exploring length, strength and suitable materials to carry weight over distance, including themselves. they have designed bridges to travel over and through and chose how to test their bridges., some chose toy cars, others water and a lot of interest in making "cement" with mud, sand and water. we will continue this interest into our next topic, so keep checking in to see how we do.
Creators and Inventors
Our KS2 children are beginning to think outside the box, starting with an idea sharing challenge where we had to find a stick and explain to the group, "its not a stick, its a..." with a stick named DUG we used this title to decide if our ideas were Decorative, Useful, or Game. this activity encouraged the children to see resources as more than what is first seen and to think creatively. This then led into their individual challenges to become creators or inventors.
Silver award
Our challenge this half term, sees our Voyagers becoming creators. they have been asked to plan something Decorative, Useful or part of a game, to develop our sensory garden, which is looking a little unloved in the Winter season. once the children had planned to IMPRESS, thinking of an idea, the method, its purpose, which resources they needed, they were let loose to create their idea. We saw lots of selecting the correct resources and using maintenance tools under supervision, the children used loose parts to decorate with paint, some began to plant seeds, including a pizza tree; we look forward to seeing if that grows! and even the beginnings of a water slide. over the next two weeks, the children will be continuing to IMPRESS by evaluating how they are doing, as they need to change or adapt their ideas depending on success, before recording the skills they have used and gained and planning how they can share their ideas and present them to others.
Gold Award
Our Pioneers have been given the challenge to invent a way to transport an object from A to B. With the freedom to decide the distance, terrain and how they will transport their object, we are looking forward to seeing some interesting ideas. Using the plan to IMPRESS sheets, the Pioneers also have to think of ideas of how to transport the object of their choice, gather resources and test their designs, with time to reflect on last week's results, the children will be predicting outcomes as they adapt their designs and add additional challenges to develop their designs further. Our end target is for the children to invent a collective design where a continuous path such as dominoes or full circuit can be completed, incorporating each child's design, before sharing their achievements with our Voyagers.
Keep checking in, to see how our Einsteins are doing.
