Category Archives: D&T

Perfect Pasta

Kestrels finished their D&T topic this week by planning and making their own pasta sauce with fresh ingredients. They weighed, chopped and prepared a lovely meal for themselves and tucked into a tomato and vegetable pasta dish. I have to say, they were delicious, you can ask them to make you one now!

D&T – Cooking

Today Year 5 started their new Design and Technology project – Cooking. This session was all about looking at pasta dishes that are available on the market today. All the children took part in taste testing the various dishes in order to decide which ingredients they favoured. That carried out a questionnaire to establish the opinions of 10 of their classmates and next week, they will be planning their own pasta dish.

D & T Bridges

This term, year 5 have started a new D&T project – Bridges. They started off by trying to make a strong tower from 1 sheet of paper and scissors only! It was great fun and certainly tested their skills.
Then the children were given a template of a bridge and were asked to see how many maths cubes the bridge would hold before collapsing… the results were amazing! Some groups managed some 40 cubes. The next task was to attempt to strengthen the bridge. The children came up with various ideas and one group, managed to hold 94 cubes on their newly designed bridge.
Next, we moved onto the design stage… it’s early days but I’m sure you’ll agree, these bridges are going to be incredible!
Next week, we’ll be making them so keep checking our blog.

Anglo Saxon Bags

Year 5 have been practising their sewing skills in order to make their Anglo-Saxon bags. They are now able to thread a needle, tie a knot and do various stitches such as back stitch and over stitch. We’ve had some great results.

Testing Materials

Year 5 have been testing materials today to decide which one would be the best to make their Anglo-Saxon bag out of. They had various materials and had to test their durability and authenticity, as well as whether the material was waterproof. They all decided that the most appropriate material would be hemp, mainly because of its authenticity. They are now busy designing their bags and will be ready to start sewing soon. 😁

Building Bridges

Year 5 have worked extremely hard to design, build, complete and test their bridges using levers.

They really have used their knowledge from seeing designs and thinking hard about the needs of the task: to get a car across the bridge and even a boat safely under the bridge once it has been lifted.

Have a look at how brilliant some of the bridges are. They have worked hard to overcome several problems. Some of their ideas were harder to put into practice than they imagined once they began working with their chosen materials.

A great effort Kestrels.

Pulleys

Today year 5 were experimenting with making pulleys. They followed a set of instructions to make a simple pulley.

It did take some problem solving, as threading the string through the holes in the cup became a challenge, as well as ensuring the knots in the string were tight and the string was the same length.

Once the pulleys were made they enjoyed seeing how it worked and trying to pull up different things. As they experimented, they thought about how to apply a pulley to a bridge.

If you would like to have a go at making a pulley, you too can follow the following instructions. Good luck.

Bridges

This week Year 5 started their ‘Bridges’ topic. They learnt the 4 types of bridges that exist, as well as how bridges are constructed today.  One of the activities was to work with a partner and construct the tallest tower they could, and then see if their construction would balance a ruler…many did!
They then had to construct a bridge out of cardboard. They learnt that when they inserted an arch under the main bridge beam, they were able to place more weight on the bridge and it held.
One group managed to balance an incredible 60 multi cubes before their bridge collapsed. Amazing!