DT in Year 1

Spring 2 - Food and Nutrition

Making a Smoothie

Spring 1 - Structures

Making a Windmill

Autumn 2 - Textiles

Making a Hand Puppet

Technical Knowledge

Joining fabrics

What are the different techniques that may be used to join fabrics for different purposes?

We read the story of The Gingerbread Man. We explained that over the next few lessons, the children will make a hand puppet of one of the characters and will then use the puppets in a retelling of the story.

We looked at examples of gloves, mittens and hand puppets. 

We demonstrated several ways of joining fabric together without sewing and explained joining techniques are the different methods used to connect two pieces of material together. We looked at three different joining techniques:

• Pinning
• Stapling
• Gluing

We made sure the children understood how to use each joining technique safely and sensibly.

As a class, we discussed the pros and cons of each method of joining fabric. We discussed when you might use each different method: 

When is it best to use pins? When you want to stick something small together. They won’t work for big bits - Izzy

When is it best to use staples? When you need to fix something that has ripped you can staple it. It would be good for small and big pieces of fabric - Logan

When is it best to use glue? Glue can be easily ripped apart – Arlo  Glue would be good for sticking on the eyes and mouth - Matilda

Which joining technique do you like best, and why? Staples because they stick the fabric together. Safety pins would leave too many gaps - Oscar

Design

What do you need to be able to think about to design a puppet?

The children used a design sheet to design what their character will look like. They labelled it with the resources they would need and the joining techniques they will use.

They then pinned the template to their fabric and cut out their two pieces to make their puppet.

Make

What do you need to do to align two pieces of fabric successfully?

We watched the videos that modelled how to join the two pieces of fabric then had a go by ourselves. We made sure the edges were together and started at one corner before moving around the outline.

All children chose to use stapling at their joining technique.

We then used different materials; wool, buttons and googly eyes, to decorate our puppet to look like our design. All children decided to use glue as their joining technique.

Evaluate

Can you evaluate your own and others work?

Let's look back at our original design, does it match my product? Did I meet the design brief? Did the joining technique work? 

Autumn 1 - Toys before Technology 

Making a Moving Storybook

Technical Knowledge

What are sliders?

Exploring sliders and movement

We put a toy on a table and asked the children how they could move it up or down or from side to side. We then had the children demonstrate by moving themselves then asked them if we could make a picture move in the same way?

Emily Grace, “When you slide something sideways or lift it up and down it moves.”

We introduced children to a moving story book and discussed how it worked. Children noticed how the pictures moved side to side or up and down when you pulled a piece of card. We explained they would be making their own moving story books using lollipop sticks as a, ‘slider.’

We showed the children a pre-assembled car and street, and rabbit and hat moving picture. We demonstrated how they moved and asked the children how they thought the car moves along the street scene and the rabbit moves up and down in the hat? 

Abbie, “ It moves side to side when you move the stick.” Logan, “ It’s an up and down slider.”

We explained the car is a side-to-side slider mechanism and the rabbit is an up and down slider mechanise. We explained that mechanisms are the parts of an object that move together.

Children then explored in pairs making an up and down slider and a side to side slider.

They had to make slots in their pictures to slide their sliders through. We discussed lots of ways of making holes and decided upon a hole punch and using a pencil and rubber to pop holes in the paper. We discussed making sure we only cut between the two holes.

Eva, “ We don’t cut from the end because it wouldn’t stop.”

Children were then asked to move their car sliders backwards and forwards so they could explain that the slider was moving through the slot.

Oscar, “ We pull the stick side to side.”

Children were then asked to move their sliders up and down so they could explain that the slider is moving up and down through the slot.

Abbie, “ An up slider needs to pop the rabbit out of the top.”

We asked the children how they might stop the rabbit wobbling from side-to-side instead of going straight up and down.  They investigated different methods and why they would or wouldn’t work.

Eliza, “ we can use sticky tape.”

We tested it but the stick stuck and wouldn’t move.

Logan, “ We can use blutak.”

We tested it but it only worked a few times before it fell off. We finally decided to glue strips of paper to act as a guide, which are pieces of card stuck to the back of the hat on either side of where the handle will run. They form a sort of groove in which the handle slides, so restricting the movement.

Design

A Humpty Dumpty moving story book

Can you design three pages of a moving story book by; drawing the background pictures, drawing the moving parts; deciding whether you will use a side to side or up and down slider on each page; labelling the movement of each type of slider?

As a class we watched the story of Humpty Dumpty then recapped the three main events.

We spoke about our target market (Reception children) and thought about what they would like to see in our moving story books.

We then wrote our ‘Design criteria.’

We used our class design template to decide what moving part and mechanism we should have on each page.

Children decided whether a 'side to side' or 'up and down' slider would work best and where these should be on our backgrounds.

Make

Can you create moving models that use sliders?

Children were provided with the materials and asked to work in groups of three to produce one page each for their book.

They worked together to try and use the same colours for their backgrounds and used the class plan to add their slots and sliders into the correct places.

Children were reminded of our design criteria to make sure their books were appropriate for Reception children.

Evaluate

Can you evaluate your product against the design criteria?

We looked through our finished books and checked we had met each of the items on our design criteria list. We spoke about what we liked, didn’t like and would do differently next time.

Two of our children took one of our books to gain some feedback from the Reception children. They said the following:

Graham said, "The colouring was good."

Jacob said, "I can see Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall and then fall, that’s good."

Alex said, "I like how Humpty can move."

Grace said, "I like the castle."

We agreed that all of our books met the design criteria but that next time we need to use guides for each slider to stop our mechanisms from falling out of the book.