This half term in 3V we have been undertaking an exciting Design Technology project - designing and making our own kites!
Over the past few weeks, we've been hard at work researching the history of kites and finding out about all the different types of kite in use all over the world. We used information gleaned from our research to help us decide which type of kite would be the best for us to make, since we are all novice kite flyers. We devised a set of 'design success criteria' to help us in deciding what we wanted from our kites.
We elected to make traditional diamond-shaped kites, as these are simple to make, but effective at flying and relatively easy to steer - important factors for those of us who had never flown a kite before! We also decided that we would make our kites from paper rather than plastic, as we are mindful of the harmful effect on the environment if our plastic kites should fly away and get lost! Paper is also readily available and easy to decorate.
After we'd decided on a basic plan, we set about making our own designs - there was a huge variety of different colourful patterns and pictures!
Once we had completed our designs, we moved on to the practical: measuring and cutting out our templates, and then strengthening them with carefully measured craft straws. To keep our designs light, we used sticky tape to fix the spars. We then added colourful ribbon tails to add ballast and make our kites look even more attractive. Finally, we knotted on a length of string.
Our kites were ready to fly, and we were lucky that it was a windy day! We went out to the playground to test them - it was enormous fun and they worked amazingly well!
We then completed an evaluation of our kites: most agreed that our kites might be better with stronger spars, as they had started to bend with overuse - and some felt that the paper structure might be vulnerable to getting wet.
We have created a colourful corridor display to showcase our efforts in Design Technology - we hope you like it!
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