As part of Scottish Book Week, we read a wonderful book called ‘Rocketmole’ by Matt Carr. The main character is a mole who has decided to build his own rocket to fly to the moon. This inspired us to learn more about how we can use our learning and skills across curriculum subjects to design, engineer and create our own inventions. We read the book and discussed the characters in detail, then we talked about subjects that might have skills we could transfer and use in different ways such as problem solving in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEAM).
We worked in teams to design and build our own catapults to understand how rockets need speed and energy to launch themselves into space. Created our own obstacle course and practiced our navigation skills by directing partners who could not see around the cones without knocking them over. We also applied our knowledge of grid references to play a strategic game of battleships with a partner, which was lots of fun and hard work applying our thinking skills to beat our opponent!