By Merryn Burgess

This week we made hand models! The hand models that we made was a STEM activity that we did with P5/6 as part of out topic ‘Fix It’.

Because it was Halloween, we made a skeleton type model of a human hand and were learning about the bones, joints and tendons.

We had a challenge to make a moving hand!

First, we got into groups of 3 and got all of our supplies (card, scissors, sellotape, some straws, string and a ruler.)   Then we figured out who had the biggest hand and drew the outline onto the paper.

The second thing we did was carefully cut out the hand and drew on all of the finger joints.

Next, we had to take straws and cut them to the correct size and attach them to the hand.  This was to represent the tendon sheaths.

The next bit was quite fiddly!  We had to take a piece of string and thread it through the straw and tie a knot at the end so it wouldn’t slip out.

Finally, we stuck the hand model to a ruler (this was acting as the arm.)

It was important we had time to fix our models before the challenges.  Some groups realised their straws were too long or that the Sellotape was getting in the way.

In our groups we had lots of fun activities to do.  We had to pull on certain strings to make signals like: a peace sign, the rock sign and the shaka.

Then we had to use our model to pick up a piece of paper.

I liked it when we joined another group and used our model hands to high five, fist pump, pinkie promise and play a game of rock, paper, scissors!