Plastic free Christmas decorations

We have made a material, that is a bit like a flexible plastic, which can be put in the food waste bin when it is no longer needed. We mixed together equal quantities of cornflour and water and microwaved it. Once we made a few decorations, some of us then experimented to see what happened when we used different ratios of cornflour and water. Once they have all cooled off tomorrow, we are going to decorate them.

Types of plastic

We have found out that there are many different types of plastic. They are all made in a slightly different way, to give them different properties. This also means that they need to be recycled in different ways too. We tried to find as many different examples as we could, 1 person in the class completed the challenge by finding an example of all 7 types! 

Plastic free Christmas

We have continued our journey, finding out how plastics are made and the problems they cause when not disposed of properly. Today we have been making plastic free wrapping paper. We made our own stamps using potatoes, it took a lot of perseverance to make the stamps, but we got there! We have taken our stamps home so that we can use them again this Christmas.

Upcycling

We have been thinking about the other uses plastic items have, when they are no longer needed. We have turned plastic drink bottles into bird feeders - we hope the birds enjoy them!

Polymer production

We have continued looking at the production of plastic today and have made our own polymer - slime!

Plastic free Christmas

We are taking part in a series of webinars over the next 5 weeks entitled ‘Plastic free Christmas’. We are going to be looking at what plastics are, how they made and used but also looking at different materials and their properties. Today our webinar was all about what plastics are, we listened to a scientist who is an expert on plastics and had some of our questions answered live! We are now thinking about what makes a good insulator and have tested different materials to see how well they keep a cup of water warm.

Young Shakespeare Company

We were very lucky to have the young Shakespeare company come in and perform Romeo and Juliet to us. It was a fantastic, action packed couple of hours and we really got to take part in the story, some of us having star roles!

inspirational speeches

We have been writing some incredibly inspirational speeches - come back soon to see some!

Manifestos

Last week, we created manifestos to persuade people to vote for us. Some of us pretended we were living in the Stone Age, we thought about what problems we may need to overcome and the skills we would have needed to have had in that time period. Some of us wrote manifestos for now, thinking about the problems we are facing now and the skills and qualifications we already have to help. We then voted for which manifesto was the most persuasive. We had one winner for the Stone age but joint winners for now - have  a read of our winning manifestos below!

Job interviews

We held job interviews for the roles of farmers and hunter-gatherers. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been thinking about the skills both of these people would have had to have. We have also undertaken some practical tasks including designing a meal using the ingredients we would have had - even an egg sandwich is quite tricky to make! Before the interviews, we had to prepare answers for some questions we may have been asked in the actual interview. These questions included; why you want to be a farmer/hunter-gatherer, what skills you have that are important for the role and what benefits would you bring to our tribe if you were given the role.

Finished items!

Here are our finished Druid people wearing their tie-dye cloaks and our finished jewellery inspired by the Stone, Bronze and Iron ages.

Cloaks and Jewellery

This morning we unwrapped our cloaks to see how well they had dyed - take a look, what do you think? We now need to wait for them to dry before we put them on our Druid spoons.  We have also now finished our jewellery. We have painted it to look like teeth, bones, stones and metal and have threaded it either onto dried grass twine or leather strips.

Druid Cloaks

We have been thinking about how Druids (and Celts) would have dyed fabric. We have concluded that it is likely they boiled up berries or leaves to get colours, or used blood. We have opted for trying to tie-dye some cloaks using dye made in this way. Mrs Buxton made the dye (because it takes several hours). She made us a a purple dye using a mixture of blackberries and sloe berries and a green dye using nettle leaves. We have designed our tie-dye patterns, looking at different options and patterns. We are making cloaks for wooden spoon sized Druids, so needed to decorate them too!

Iron Age experience day

On Friday, we went to Greystones Nature Reserve in Bourton-on-the-Water where we experienced what life would have been like for people living in the Iron Age. We had a go at building a wattle and daub wall, lit fires, ground flour using stones and made bread and cooked it on a fire, all in a replica Iron Age round house. In the afternoon we completed a variety of tasks, looking at artefacts from the Iron Age to help us gain even  more of an understanding of life in this time.

Jewellery making

We have been looking  at some of the nicer objects people in the stone, bronze and iron age would have had. We focused on jewellery and are recreating pieces out of clay, here is stage 1!

Welcome to Brazil!

Welcome to Brazil Class. Our topic for this term is looking at the changes from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, we are thinking about the question - How did our ancestors influence our lives today?

The Amazon

During Countries week, we considered whether we should be saving the Amazon rainforest. We researched the Amazon and all the problems that are currently facing it. Have a read through these examples of work and see what you think - should we be doing more?