Timberkits

I confess to being very lax on my D&T teaching. I always figured it wasn't really my thing and I don't have the patience or attention to detail required to design and build things which Ikea sell for under £1.

I've started to change though.

It began with throwing a pot (onto a wheel rather than at a wall) which is without doubt one of the most therapeutic ways to get your hands dirty and - if you're my age and remember Ghost - think happily of Patrick Swayze for 15 minutes. As if I needed an excuse.

We found a friendly pottery place which welcomes home ed children and learnt about clay, glazing and firing as we happily made and then decorated some wonky pots. Enthused by the pot making success I went on a hunt for our next D&T project and happened across Timbertech through a face book group.

The Timberkits are a genius little box of self-build automata mechanisms made by Timbertech. We opted for the 4 kit box so that the boys could make one and then in a nod to iterative development, make a second having learnt lessons from the first.

You can download lessons plans from the website and watch handy YouTube videos so we made use of those to learn about the components and backed it up with some Twinkl resources on Automata Animals to look at how animals move and design our machines. We had also visited the Mad Museum in Stratford which ties in perfectly.

It was a fabulous project - I could rave on about the process, the cutting and sanding and sticking but actually the upshot was the boys have some really cool little toys that they are proud of and they learnt lots about design, measuring, axles, cams, followers...

A spider which goes up and down and spins.

A helicopter which goes up and down with rotating blades.

A sheep that eats grass.

I'm a D&T convert. I'm saving up tin cans to make pencil holders.