Month: July 2020

Optical Illusions

After a busy morning of Maths and English, Year 6 group 2 became artists this afternoon and created some great optical illusions. Using simple lines, space and colours they learned how to create art that tricks the eyes. We were impressed with all the work, particularly Hongxin who amazed us with her use of colour and shading skills. Well done.

 

 

Make your own wind vane

Equipment: pencil with a rubber end, drawing pin (a longer push drawing pin works best), card, straw, scissors, ruler, felt-tips, sticky tape, compass.

How to: cut out a circle of strong card (around 15cm diameter); draw a vertical and horizontal line on the circle, splitting it into quarters; at the end of each line, mark N, S, E and W; cut a small triangle of card and tape it to the end of the straw; attach the middle of the straw to the rubber end of the pencil using a push drawing pin; push the pencil through the centre of the card circle to form your weather vane; place the vane outside (in the ground/a pot of soil) so that N matches North on a compass.

The children could: could explore how the straw moves to show them the direction the wind is coming from; track this over the day/week to see if there are changes and whether this corresponds to other changes in the weather.

Taking it further: children could use a protractor to mark NW, SW etc. on their vanes and track the direction of the wind more accurately; they could research weather forecasts and find out if the predicted wind direction is correct.