Year 3-4 Moving Monsters

Beware monsters about!

For Design Technology in the Spring term, Year 3-4 were set the challenge of making and designing a monster that had moving parts controlled by pneumatics.

By working in small groups the children were able to develop the skills of working as part of a team, which is not always easy!

Before starting their designs, the children experimented with a variety of familiar objects that use air to make them work such as balloons, whistles and party blowers. What a lot of fun and noise! Then they compared the effectiveness of different pneumatic systems using syringes and tubing, eventually agreeing on a system that used two syringes on either end of a piece of tubing.

After that, each child came up with a series of designs which they shared with others in their group and the best features of all the designs were put together to form one group design.

It was then time to make their working model using cardboard boxes brought from home.

All the children worked hard to control and perfect the movement of their monster before the final decorating stage. Next it was time to share the finished article with the rest of the class and everyone appreciated the work put in by all the groups.  Most models worked well and all the children were able to say what worked well and what needed improving next time.

All agreed this was a fun topic and a good way to learn about pneumatics but we don’t think any of the models will be appearing on the next series of the BBC’s  - Dragon’s Den!!

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