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.

Stone Age

The stone age has been a fantastic topic; we took about 4 weeks over it, using it as a running thread through various activities.

I've been too busy to blog properly for the last month or so so I'll cheat with visuals, a resource list and a question-based structure to show our working ...

History : How long was the stone age and what are the Neolithic, Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods?
How does life now differ from stone age life? Where did people live, how did they cook, sleep, hunt? English : Compehension on Skara Brae.

 

Literacy : Stone Age Boy + The Secrets of Stonehenge.

RE & DT : Where is Stonehenge and what is a henge? How was it built, over what period and why? Who might be buried there? Where did the stones come from and how might they have been moved? What clues were found to indicate the original purpose? Did the purpose change over time? Why do people worship there today?

Art : Making natural dyes with herbs/spices/berries, using charcol for drawing, stone age cave paintings.

Resources:
History timeline
Twinkl stone age resources, incl making a paper model of Stonehenge
Comprehension on Skara Brae
Horrible Histories clips
Field trip to Stonehenge

Stratford Adventures

If you hostelled back in the 80s and 90s it's worth another go just to see the changes. The YHA is awesome. Beds are made up, there's wifi, some of the accommodation is 4*. Oh and did I mention it's still unbelievably cheap?!

Our latest adventure was to Stratford YHA where they have deluxe pods which are in essence a teeny tiny shed with beds, sink, 1m2 wet room and a microwave. Despite being separate you get access to all the usual hostel facilities - lounge, games, restaurant and self catering kitchen.

There was a sports college group staying at the same time so the boys were exposed to typical teenagers in droves.

Horrors.

One boy helped K set up the pool table, another switched the TV to cartoons. A girl stepped in when W was too short to see over the reception counter to ask for water. When the kids were running back to the pod, one pair of hoodie wearing hooligans hanging outside the back door were at great pains to say they'd kept an eye on the little boys they'd seen run past as they were worried they might be lost.

As well as the college kids, there was the usual eclectic mix of European travellers, back packers and a family with younger kids. Oh, but that was us.

We'd originally though we'd do Stratford for Shakespeare but as it turned out there wasn't anything suitable at RSC so we adapted and decided to do the MAD museum and Butterfly Farm instead. It was fantastic - MAD was an inspiring collection of machines, buttons. ball bearings and illusions - perfect for W who loves inventing and for S too!

The Butterfly Farm was an unexpected delight. I thought we'd have to seek out butterflies but we were swarmed as we entered - there were involuntary 'oooooohs'. As well as the butterflies there's a caterpillar area, perfect for discussion of life cycles, and a bug and reptile bit too which has some creepy residents in addition to (inexplicably) a handful of tropical fish in a tank. The highlight for us was the iguana who was very happy to wander about eating all the best plants.

A much needed break and we were already planning the return trip before we'd reached the M40.

The View restaurant on the river overlooking RSC did fantastic fish & chips and proper pub-style blackcurrant squash...

 

Colour

The boys had some homework and it's a minibeast behaviour investigation. Hypothesise, theorise, colour in - and then my favourite bit - sit down in the sunshine for 20 minutes. Lovely.

The objective was to find out which colour insects prefer. To land on I mean, not for their lounge wall. For lounge walls it's got to be dead salmon, mouse's back or clunch http://www.farrow-ball.com/colours/paint/fcp-category/list

The little critters didn't disappoint. The bugs were well behaved too. Within seconds of setting up our experiment we had creepy crawly visitors landing on our colour spots.

Orange was the run-away winner... or should that be Charlotte's Locks?

Losing my Marbles

We've been working hard this week and we needed some light relief today.

Inspired by the FrugalFun4Boys blog we decided to create some marble runs. There's a bit of D&T (planning, designing, iterative development, safety, tool use, etc) and science (mostly gravity) and some maths (angles) in this but I'm dressing it up - we're making awesome tracks for marbles and hexbugs and it's a lot of fun.

The boys had a great time with this, in fact it might be a record for engagement in a task - 2.5 happy hours spent literally losing our marbles. Mostly under the fridge.

Designing a marble maze which was almost instantly upgraded to a hexbug maze! First step, draw out the design...

Fast forward 2.5 hours & 80 giant lolly sticks ....

I wasn't idle while the boys were busy - here's my marble drop run! The boys did the scoring and you get 100000 points if the marble drops out of the run. No wonder so many are under the fridge now!

For the instructions, see : http://frugalfun4boys.com/2014/08/17/build-marble-run-craft-sticks/

Don't Mention the War

Or do.

We ended up on the Second World War topic after W made a booby-trap in the bath using balloons and string. It's too complicated to describe and any photos would involve nudity so suffice to say if you'd tried to use our shower yesterday you'd have had a nasty shock when a balloon partially filled with water fell to the floor! That'd teach you to use our shower without asking!

We googled booby traps but I fell into one as everything the internet could offer seemed to make use of the word booby (snigger) or involve swearing or death or both. With a bit of filtering during translation we did find some interesting stuff about pit vipers being hung from trees in the Vietnam war and pressure sensor bombs being hidden under helmets by the retreating German army in WWII.

It was all a bit of a downer as there's nothing terribly cheerful about a deadly snake attaching itself to your face or having your legs blown off so we moved on to code breaking. We watched a short video on Enigma and got to thinking about cryptography and why armies needed to send secret messages in the first place.

For our secret code machines the boys made matching rotating cyphers so that they can exchange secret messages and change the settings each day at midnight, just like in the war. Or maybe 8am because we're not as disciplined as the German army.

So far the secret messages say 'ask mummy' (for what?! this is torture!) and 'snail'. I guess the lettuce-eating invaders in the back garden had better watch out. Or maybe someone will ask me for a snail. Only time will tell.

Topically, we had a good rummage through my Dad and Grandad's things as well today. Lots of war memorabilia which was very topical. Here's Nana with a 'Dig for Victory' poster, making a guest appearance in class!

Smooth Moves

K & W are doing a DT project on smoothie making and having designed their smoothie recipe and made a plan today was the day to make it.

The carrot-strawberry-lemon-milk creation that was W's dream turned into a pink nightmare but in the spirit of iterative development, he tweaked the recipe and came up with something much more like K's ice-cream-strawberry-chocolate crowd-pleaser!

Side note teaching including safe tool use (apple peeler, blender and knife) plus hulling, chopping, scooping and measuring. More importantly it saved me thinking up anything for pudding today...

Tomorrow they'll be writing up their evaluations..

Half Half Term

It's half term but being EHE the holidays feel a bit weird. On one hand, they're like a normal day and we still do regular stuff like maths, moaning about my cooking and teeth brushing. On the other hand, we can actually see our school-going friends in the daytime which means outings and playdates.

Like everything home ed, it's flexible.

So today, the sun is shining the boys' cousins are round. What better than some colouring, trampolining, clay models and wood carving. Wood carving isn't my forte, so thank you YouTube for an intro to the basics. So far we've made a really nice ....

.... chisel mark in a piece of wood.