The pre-school children have undertaken STEM workshops over a period of several weeks. They have learned to be engineers by building different structures using Kapla. Eleanor Hutcheon who is the Shetland UHI STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Outreach Co-ordinator led the workshops in the General Purpose Room in the school.

The children were challenged to use their creativity and problem solving skills to build a secure structure which was tested by dropping a tennis ball to see if it would stand firm or collapse. The children came up with lots of different designs and soon discovered that the strongest structures were those with a secure base which were built up using alternate vertical and horizontal layers of Kapla.

The Kapla was also used to build roads, bridges, letters and numbers. Some of the children were keen to write their names. The workshops have been great fun and we would like to thank Eleanor for supporting and inspiring our learning across the STEM subjects.

‘My tower is the tallest one.’

‘I wrote my name in capitals.’

‘Engineers help to make buildings.’

‘I need to measure my tower.’

‘The number on the ruler is 7.’