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.

Everything Zen ..

... I don't think so.

The 11+ (sorry Transfer Test) created a pretty stressful couple of months (understatement). As an antidote I had the idea of making mini zen gardens. I was giddy with optimism and self-congratulation at this easy, quick, genius idea. Clever me.

A quick search on google images only served to reinforce the fact that this was the best idea I'd had all week.

Problem 1 was locating suitable frames. I spent an unhappy 20 minutes crawling around in a spidery loft, banging my head (in frustration and also on the rafters) until I found a pair of matching frames. Unfortunately they had our wedding pictures in but I was too fed up to keep hunting so now I'm looking at my younger self, in a big white dress, stuck on the fridge. If I could go back and give advice to 20-something-newly-wed-fridge-girl it would be : don't even think about making a mini zen garden when you're 36. Oh - and spend less time on, or in, the fridge.

Problem 2 was finding sand. And gravel. And shiny beads. I didn't know Buddhists could be this demanding. Sheds were searched, craft drawers emptied and in the end, in despair, I tipped a load of sand out from the candle arrangement on the coffee table. Phew.

Problem 3 - tools. The loft, sheds and craft drawers are full to bursting with everything, literally everything, except for mini zen garden tools. Luckily, we foraged some sticks from the garden and set to making mini rakes with a glue gun and some swearing.

We're 2 hours in and I'm still waiting for a serene feeling of deep inner peace to descend.

Finally, with frames, sand, gravel, beads, candles, stones and custom-made mini stick tools all in play we were ready for some serious relaxation.

Re-designing was fun, it was like an etch-a-sketch.

Not enough fun to eclipse problem 4 though.... there is sand EVERYWHERE.

I spent the next hour hoovering. I think zen is overrated. I'll stick with gin.