Come with us on a journey into the far reaches of space.  We will be discovering what makes up our solar system and learning how and why the planets move in space the way we observe.  Learning about forces, we will be using this knowledge to design our own Mars rovers and construct them so that they will be able to withstand the demands of an alien lanscape. 

Week 6

This week, we invited parents into school to take part in a lesson.  We have been learning about the Solar System but it's really hard to understand just how vast it is.  Using the scale where Earth would be shrunk to the size of a full stop, we set out in teams to create a scale model of the Solar System.

We were amazed at how far some of the planets are from the sun and also how tiny some of them are- we assume Earth is nearly invisible from Neptune.  Amazingly, it was over 50m from the Sun to Neptune on our scale.  Even more amazing is the fact that on the same scale, the nearest star would be 458km away!

Week 5- Lunar Rover

As part of our enquiry, we've been designing a new lunar rover.  Working in engineering teams, our DT lessons have focused upon the form and function of the rover.  We have designed simple ladder chassis to support the vehicle and built these from wood.  Our precise cutting means our buggies should run straight once we connect up the motors and pulley mechanisms next week. 

Week 4- PSHE: Organising a charity event

As part of our rights and respect topic this term, we have been discussing charities and how they help others.  We took on the responsibility of organising part of our Comic Relief fundraising this week by setting up some games in the hall.  We designed different games for the other children to play and then, in the afternoon, ran these.  Each child in school had the opportunity to play and then we awarded prizes for the overall winner of each game.

Week 3- Creating lunar rover designs.

As part of our enquiry, we have been set the design task of creating an operational lunar rover model.  We need to build this using pulleys and electric motors.  We grouped up into design teams and considered the form and the function.  We then designed a plan for our model, using ideas from Roll-Royce to inspire us!

Week 2- World Book Day

This week, we celebrated World Book Day with some really exciting activities.  Kicking off the day, we took part in a national online Football and Book Quiz.  We did well although we were slightly disappointed in Mr Myland's lack of foot ball knowledge! 

We then joined our Year 2 friends in the hall and had a "Book Picnic" where we shared our favourite books together over a biscuit.  

Our children entered a national competition to design a new book token- the winner of this will have their design printed on thousands of tokens sold in shops around the country so fingers crossed!

We finished our day with a book scavenger hunt where we competed against our friends to find items that related to book clues. 

Week 1- The Solar System

This week the children have started their learning about space.  We've been gathering knowledge about each of the planets and learning a sentence to help us to remember the order they are in from the sun.  We then looked at how the planets orbit the sun.  By creating human models of the orbits on the playground, we were able to see why the planets take different orbit times and also why they rarely align.