Boats 2018

This half term, we have been learning all about boats and we worked together to create them. First we worked together to design our boats and labelled them with all of the correct words. We have learnt that the steering wheel on a boat is called a helm. We know that boats have a mast, sails, stern and some boats have a crow’s nest.

We used a technique called critique to help us. When we use critique, we can offer our opinions and advice to others in the class. We have to make sure that we follow 3 important rules. If we didn’t, we might end up hurting someone’s feelings about their work. These are:

1. Be kind

2. Be helpful

3. Be specific

We used different techniques to help us to make sure that things were stuck on tight. We remembered that boats need to be waterproof so that they don’t sink so some of us had to protect the boats that we had made.

When we were half-way through our boat building session, we had to stop and take a look at what we had completed so far. We moved around the groups to see what everyone else had been working on. Then we chose someone else’s boat to evaluate, remembering the three important rules. Once we had offered advice to someone else, we went back to our boats to complete them. Take a look below at the start and finished products.

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Sewing Skills

This half term, we are learning about how to make puppets in DT.

Do you remember our previous blog post from a few weeks ago when we made finger puppets? Click here to see the post.

Next week, we are going to start designing and making a hand puppet but we don’t want to use glue any more. We need a stronger way to hold our fabric together so we decided that sewing would be a stronger way to keep the fabric together. Before we start to design and make our hand puppets, we need to practise our sewing skills.

We learnt about 2 types of stitch that we can use. They are called the running stitch where the needle goes in and out of the fabric like this.

This is the over stitch where we need to go around the outside of the fabric.

Needles can be really sharp so we had to be careful not to touch the end of the needle otherwise we would hurt our fingers.

This task was something that we couldn’t rush and took a little while to complete but we are pleased that we showed concentration and perseverance to get the job done!

Excellent job everyone!

Making Puppets

In DT this week, Miss Varley set us a challenge.

Can you make your own finger puppet out of material?

We had already learnt about the different kinds of puppets that we could use and what they were made from.

This is a rod puppet and the parts of the body moves when you move the rods. Sometimes it takes two people to help to move a rod puppet.

This is a marionette puppet and it works by moving the strings up and down, backwards and forwards to get the different body parts to move. Pinocchio is a marionette puppet.

These are finger puppets and they fit onto one finger. We can use finger puppets to help to tell stories.

This is a hand puppet and you can put your whole hand inside. Sometime these types of puppets have squeakers in the mouth so when you press it, it sounds like the puppet is speaking.

 Miss Varley gave us some very clear instructions to help us to make our finger puppets. We talked to our friends to decide which puppet that we wanted to make. We noticed that the instructions all had bossy verbs (imperative verbs) in them that made them commands. Can you spot the bossy verbs in each command? 

First we had to choose our piece of material the right colour that would match our character.

Next we had to cut out our template and then draw around it onto our material. This would give us the shape that we needed to cut out.

After that, we had to cut out the shape twice to make a front and a back to our puppet. If we only had one piece, then it wouldn’t fit onto our finger.

Then we had to glue around the edges of the two pieces of material and stick them together. We had to be careful not to put any glue on the bottom of the puppet otherwise we wouldn’t be able to put it on our finger.

Finally, we were able to decorate our puppets to make them look more like our characters we had in mind. We are rather pleased with our efforts.

What do you think?  Can you tell what the different characters are? 

Boats

What an exciting morning we have had in Pearl class! Look at our fabulous boats!

Today was the day that we were going to make our boats. We worked together to design our boats and labelled them with all of the correct words. We have learnt that the steering wheel on a boat is actually called a helm. We know that boats have a mast, sails, stern and some boats have a crow’s nest.

We used a technique called critique to help us today. When we use critique, it is so we can offer our opinions and advice to someone else in the class. We have to make sure that we follow 3 important rules. If we didn’t, we might end up hurting someone’s feelings about their work. These are:

1. Be kind

2. Be helpful

3. Be specific

We started off by choosing the kind of box that we wanted and Miss Varley gave us lots of different materials to choose from to help us. We used different techniques to help us to make sure that things were stuck on tight. We remembered that boats need to be waterproof so that they don’t sink so some of us had to protect the boats that we had made.

When we were half-way through our boat building session, we had to stop and take a look at what we had completed so far. We moved around the groups to see what everyone else had been working on. Then we chose someone else’s boat to evaluate, remembering the three important rules. Once we had offered advice to someone else, we went back to our boats to complete them. Take a look below at the start and finished products.

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How to continue the learning at home:

• Take a ride on a boat, maybe at the seaside or on a canal boat.
• Research different kinds of boats using the Internet.
• Talk to your child about what they have been learning about in school.
• Create your own boat from cardboard boxes at home.

Fruit Kebabs

Linked to our work about the artist Arcimboldo, we read the story Oliver’s Vegetables and Oliver’s Fruit Salad by Alison Bartlett and Vivian French.

We decided that we wanted to make some fruit kebabs linked to the stories, so we had a think about fruits that we liked and we had to choose three. Some of us choose our favourite fruits, some of use wanted to try fruits that we had never had before.

Miss Varley soon had a long shopping list with lots of different fruits on. They were: strawberries, blackberries, apples, pears, grapes, mangoes, pineapple, raisins, passionfruit, blueberries, kiwi fruit and oranges.

Before we started to make anything, we remembered lots of different ways to help us to keep safe.

1. Wash your hands and roll up your sleeves.
2. Don’t put your fingers near your face whilst you are making the fruit kebabs.
3. Be careful with the knifes and keep your fingers away from the edge – they are sharp.
4. Thread the fruit on carefully to the wooden skewer, making sure that the pointy end is away from our bodies.
5. Listen carefully to the instructions given by the adult.

After we had done all of that, we started to make our fruit kebabs.

We were able to peel, chop, dice and thread the fruit onto the kebab and we had lots of fun doing this.

As a treat once we had finished, we got to eat the fruit kebabs. Here are some of the words that we used to describe what they tasted like.

How to continue the learning at home:

• Talk to your child about the different fruits and vegetables that they like.
• Try a new fruit or vegetable with your child at home and describe what it tastes like.
• Are there different combinations of fruit that you could try together?

 

Sewing Puppets

Today we have been designing and making our own puppets. We could choose whatever we wanted to make.

First we designed our puppets and then thought about what we’d need to make it.

Then we drew around a template to get the shape of our puppet. We had to choose the right colour thread and thread a needle. This was tricky and we needed a bit of help to get this job done.

We used an up and over stitch to hold our two pieces of felt together. This took time and we couldn’t rush it.

Once we had finished our sewing, we were able to decorate it.

We used a technique called Critique to help us to assess our friend’s work half way through.

The 3 main points of Critique are:

1. Be kind – don’t be unkind about anyone’s work.

2. Be helpful – give useful advice.

3. Be specific – don’t be vague.

After we had critiqued each other’s work, we were able to finish our puppets.

We are very proud of them, what do you think?

What we have been learning?

– How to use scissors and needles safely.

– How to cut around a template

– Following a design.

– Adding decorations.

– Being critical of each other’s work

What you could do to support your child at home:

– Give your child opportunities to practise their sewing skills

– Retell or make up a story using the puppet

– Write a story including the puppet