Design Technology Week 2019
Design Technology Week 2019
This special school week the children were learning all about the design process from research to evaluation of a finished product. The design brief was to make an item from a piece of old clothing. The children learnt all about the different skills they would need: dyeing, embellishing, weaving, felting and joining. We are indebted to the many volunteers who came in on Monday to work with the children.
Later in the week we also had a special assembly from Dorset Waste Partnership talking more about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Below are examples of the work from each year group:
In Reception, we loved planning and making our own hand puppets. We used our newly learnt sewing skills to join felt shapes together to create the wonderful products. We loved making our special letter patches using embellishment skills taught to us by one of our talented visitors.
Our end product made from recycled materials was a 'sock snake'. Using an old socks, buttons and pieces of fabric, we made the amazing cuddly toys that we can keep forever. Thank you to the parents who came into help us finish off our products too!
Our task was to make a pencil case from old clothing. We were able to choose from 3 different designs - a pouch, bag or roll-up case - all secured with ribbon. We learnt lots of new skills including how to measure, cut and join fabrics and some of us even got to use the sewing machine! Many thanks to all the parents who came in to help. It was a hectic week but also a very rewarding one!
Our main aim of the week was to produce an owl soft toy. We looked at a range of soft toys and even took some apart so we could see how they were made! Apart from the actual making of our soft toy, our favourite part of the week was learning about fabric embellishments from Mrs Blogg (who taught us how to make a bow and a pom pom) and also dyeing fabric which we learnt from Mrs White. We used all of the skills we had learnt to make our own owls and we were so proud of the final product!
Our main aim of the week was to produce a cushion. We conducted product research and chose a target audience to base our design on. We learnt many fabric embellishing and sewing techniques. Our favourite techniques were then included in our cushion design. The hardwork and perseverance of the children this week has been outstanding!
Alongside this amazing project, we learnt about the production of cotton and the manufacturing of clothes; including the exploitation of workers. We learnt about the importance of Fairtrade in the fabric and clothing production industry and hope this work continues to grow for a fairer fashion world.
The children in Year 4 spent the week designing and making a cushion. The design brief was to produce a cushion suitable for a child who was to be evacuated. It needed to be fun, small enough to fit in an evacuee's suitcase and be something to comfort them when they were away from their families.
They examined and evaluated a range of cushions, learning about different techniques for joining fabric together. The children then learnt how to create a design plan. They were then ready to begin designing their cushion.
During the design process, each child had to plan what fabric they were going to use; how they would embellish and join the fabric and how they would incorporate the piece of fabric they dyed earlier in the week.
Once the designs were complete, the children began making their cushions using al the skills they had learnt during the week. They all worked really hard to sew their fabric together which was quite a challenge. The end results were great! I'm sure WW2 evacuees would have really appreciated taking any of the colourful, cuddly cushions away with them!