What is it?

“Practical Damp;T” is a collection of ideas for lessons on design, processes and materials.

What’s in it

Resources on mechanisms and movement include a Teachers’ TV video showing P1 pupils learning about the principles and processes of moving pictures, using the story “Handa’s Surprise” as inspiration.

An adaptable booklet aimed at P5 looks at making moving toys using a cam mechanism, where rotary motion is converted into linear motion, or vice versa (uploaded by hellcorner).

Cam mechanisms are also used in one of two activities offered by the Nuffield Foundation. In this one, aimed at P5, pupils can make an animal with a moving mouth. The other resource in this collection looks at making pop-up books and is aimed at P4.

The Hamilton Trust has uploaded a lesson on how to make a shekere, a West African instrument, using a plastic container and beads. There are also ideas and plans for making instruments, from hellcorner, which ask pupils to look at the properties of different materials to understand how the sound is made, and an activity from the Nuffield Foundation which asks pupils to design and make an instrument and use it to play a part in a piece for four players.

On the sewing front, resources include an activity where pupils design and make their own bean bag (from leannegwilliam) and an easy-to-follow guide to create simple hand-embroidery stitches, from hrawlins.

A project on making an egg cosy takes pupils from the design stage to the finished product, including choosing suitable fabrics and joining techniques (NGfLCymru), while a PowerPoint from fmath can be used as an introduction to making money containers, finding out what features the children want to include in their own design.

www.tes.co.ukpractical-lessons.