As part of out Design Technology unit of work, the children in year 3 have been learning about electrical circuits and how they are used in a range of everyday products.  The children were given the following design brief:

 

 

To design and make a greetings card that lights up.

You are going to design and create a bespoke, one-off greetings card for a person of your choice. You will need to consider the purpose of the card and an appropriate theme linked to Christmas. It must include an electrical element and be attractive and appealing.

The children used online research and reading to help develop the design criteria and communicated their ideas through discussion and annotated sketches. The children decided whether they would design a card with a traditional or religious Christmas theme and whether to make it 2D or 3D.

Here are some photos of our creative designers and engineers and their work:

We used copper wire to make ‘paper circuits’ using a folded over switch.

Each group were given a battery, two wires and a bulb. They were then set a challenge to work together to make the bulb light up. The children were delighted when they solved the problem and figured out how to create a working circuit.