Pre-Primary 2 have been busy learning all about what things are made of, how things move and elements of design. As a class we voted, negotiated, designed, planned, collected materials, collaborated, constructed, edited and reflected on two class projects. Our first project was the creation of a marble run that would ‘last forever and not break’. We researched to discover that metal and wood are strong and solid materials, so this was the way to go. We learnt some safety skills and then began construction. We noticed that the marbles kept rolling away. After discussions, we decided that a box was needed to stop them from rolled away and make sure we didn’t lose the marbles. We analysed our marble run and can describe it as solid, opaque, rigid, strong, heavy and most importantly ‘awesome fun to play with’.
During our initial discussions and voting, it became clear that the second-best option was to create ‘massive dominoes’ to play with outside. We visited the high school woodwork shop where Mr Watts was very helpful and kindly cut the wood to size for us. He then showed students how to sand down the edges to ensure we didn’t get splinters. After this, we researched ways to cut circles into the wood (for the dots) and learnt some safety skills while Mrs Grainger-Williams drilled the holes. Next, we had to decide if we would keep the dots as the natural wood colour or paint them. It was a landslide vote and painting was the way to go. We went out and picked 6 colours, assigned a colour to a number, and began painting. Some students took on leadership roles and oversaw matching the colour to the number, others were the busy painters.
It took great persistence, patience and collaboration to complete our projects, but all Pre-Primary students were engaged during different parts of the process and thoroughly enjoy playing with them.
This motivated our next project, the construction of individual toys. ‘I wonder what toys we could create…?’ This inspired numerous written and art activities where students exercised total autonomy to choose, design and create their own toy. We then wrote about what we used and how it moves.
This term has been very busy and full of fun, learning and construction.
Mrs. Grainger-Williams, Mrs. Moses, and PP2 students.
