This week in Design and Technology, year 3 have begun to learn about pneumatics and how the idea of pressurised air being used to make machines work goes all the way back to ancient Greece! Many of them knew that their bicycle and ball pumps use air but they were surprised to learn that the drills used to drill holes in the road are powered just by by air, and that it can provide enough power to create that amount of force! They watched as just air, powered a small rocket and are excited to be making their own pneumatic toys.
They are going to be using a mixture of new and recycled items to create their moving toys, which may look something like this:
In History, Prehistory is in the air… as the children have just begun to learn about the last part of the Stone Age and the children will be going on to learn about the Bronze and Iron Ages too. They have been imagining what their life would be like if they lived as Stone Age farmers up in Skara Bray on the Orkney Islands and wrote a diary entry for a day in their lives, as we compared just how different life was, then to now.