By Prerna Nankani, Reception Teacher.
The creation of a smart city required some forward thinking and decision making so the Reception children went for a walk to observe traffic, the different kinds of vehicles on the road and the street furniture, such as bridges, pavements etc. Back in the classroom, we all put our thinking caps on and came up with some interesting ideas on how to tackle the traffic problem. Some suggestions were flying cars, smaller pavements, buildings that can move and driverless cars. The Early Years children then got exSTEAMly busy planning and building their city and the automated cars. Each year group decided to take this theme in a different, but interesting direction, with the Toddler, Pre-Nursery and Nursery classes creating a city with blocks and junk modelling materials. The Reception children focused on making moving cars using motors and other forms of propulsion such rubber band wind up cars, a car with a pump, bottle and cork and there was even a pull back car. Such amazing creations by the little engineers!
The Reception children also designed their own superhero Bee-bot covers and learnt some coding skills by programming their Bee-bots to move around the city skillfully. The city and cars were showcased during our Assembly where Ms Kathy also announced the competition to name the city. We had some cool suggestions such as, ‘The Superhero City of Love’, ‘The Supertastic City’, ‘The Rainbow City’ and ‘The Fantastic Hero City’. The winning name was ‘The Super Happy Healthy City’ by the Reception Seahorses. Overall, it was a fun, engaging and practical week with the children being given opportunities to promote their curiosity, creativity, collaboration and problem solving skills.
Scan the QR code below to view a video of the STEAM week activities held at the Lakefront Campus.
