In Year 1, all we seem to have talked about is toys. We have been exploring popular toys, dream toys, old toys and new toys. We have been talking to adults in school about their favourite toys and how long ago they were born. We have been looking at toys in school and talking about where the best toys are! We have explored toys for inside, outside and those that can be played alone or with friends.
Did you know that the material toys are made from has developed over the years, and that many modern toys are now made of plastic? We have been exploring this in our writing and know that many old fashioned toys were made from wood, metal and cloth.
Look at us all enjoying our picnic with all our teddy bears. We took out a blanket and biscuits and shared a picnic with all of our friends. It was really exciting.
After our lovely picnic experience, we looked at all these bear books. Can you spot anything you like about these books? Miss Sleem loved the books where both words started with /b/. This was very helpful, because it helped us understand alliteration.
In our writing, alliteration is when two or more words start with the same letter or sound. We explored creating word banks of words that begin with /b/ to help us build the heading for our work…
Beautiful, baby bear. Big, blue bear. Brilliant, biscuit bear.
Can you think of anymore?
We have also been looking at other ways of playing. Playing doesn’t always mean playing with toys. Some of us enjoy playing games on our tablets or games consoles.
Technoloy often needs power and as we learn more about technology and how it works, technology creators and inventors create even better pieces of technology. But, we all agreed that sometimes, too much time on technology can make you feel grumpy or overtired.
We pieced together these puzzles to discover some children using technology…
We have been exploring how we can use drama to bring an image to life. Look at how seriously we took our work, adopting the role of parent and child, concentrating on our facial expressions and understanding the feelings they may be experiencing.
We were able to activate the images and hear the words that were shared as the image was taken.
We looked at how much time experts say we should use technology and screen time. Lots of us have clear rules at home for screen time and many of us preferred playing outside over tablet time.
We worked together to look at what time of day was best for screen time. We agreed that before school was a rush, during school we might use it for learning and then, after school we had some more time. Before bedtime didn’t seem a good time, because it meant we were actually waking up our brains and making them too busy for sleep. The best time, we think, is after school, but before dinner!
Gabriel is very talented, he can create the most beautiful toys. He uses wood that is going to be burnt, and gets it cut to help it last longer. He uses lots of different tool. He works everyday. His worship seems untidy, with lots of things spread out. There are old books on the shelf, which we think may be instructions for toy making. We noticed an energy drink, which makes us think he might be tired. We noticed his nails have some dirt in them, so we think this means he’s been working hard. We think he is an older man. We heard him talk about his wife.
Did you know that sculpture is when art is created in3D form? We have been exploring this kind of work and it made us wonder, if Gabriel uses wood, cuts it then creates something, is this the same?
First we looked at the work of artists Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett and their “Interactive Clouds” sculpture, Nicole Dyer and her “Food Sculptures” work and finally “Floating Piers” by Christo and Jeanne-Claud. These are all artists that represent sculpture in very different ways. We looked closely at them, and used out drawing skills to explore “show me what you see” which is a method of noticing the greater details of art.
After looking closely at the art, we noticed how creative the artists had been. The Interactive Cloud had raindrop, beaded strings hanging from the cloud, this linked to each individual bulb. In the video, we saw the lights turn on and off as people pulled the string. In the Floating Piers, we saw each individual panel of fabric sewn together. The Food Sculptures had many details that we recognised, like craft eyes, beads and clay. We felt that we’d all had some experience in sculpture. Some of us could manipulate play dough to make sculptures, one of us had used a stick and string to create a sculpture and lots of us had experience in using recycling to create sculptures.
We decided to explore sculpture in a really unusual way. Instead of making lots of plans, we used “Design through Making”. This is an important skill that allows us to respond to and work with materials intuitively.
We also had a number of prompts, including:
We explored using masking tape to create a drama space and discussed how we would work respectfully with this space. Together, we built up the image including tools, wood and a box. The box was heavy. We had many ideas of what it might be, including a delivery, energy drinks, food, toys and books. We agreed how we would handle theses things and were excited to explore.
Once we had opened all of the carefully wrapped items, we could see they were all toys made by Gabriel. One if the team felt these were baby toys, another group of us had got some of these toys at home. We wanted to look closely at them, but we had to handle them gently.
To develop our art skills that we’ve been working on this week, we continued our work with careful observations and drawing. We decided where we wanted to start, picking a toy and looking closely at the details.
We all worked so hard and created exceptionally detailed drawings, so we decided to create sculptures again, but this time we had a predetermined outcome. We were going to represent Gabriel’s work. This time, working differently as we had began a design process by drawing and looking at the original work.
Using similar resources and selecting those specifically for our outcomes, we began creating sculptures of Gabriel’s toys.
Using drama conventions, we were able to overhear a conversation between Gabriel and his wife. Gabriel came home from work, hair filled with dust, hands covered in paint and his body exhausted. His wife had been waiting for him to come home, sitting at the dinner table for dinner. He was so tired. Gabriel’s wife suggested asking for help, but Gabriel wasn’t sure.
Together, we worked on representing Gabriel exactly as he was in this moment.
After his conversation with his wife, Gabriel begins to create a poster, asking for help. As he creates it, he shows how reluctant he is. He’s not sure if he can share his workshop or work with other people. Although he is sad, he finished the advert and puts it up, hoping the right kind of makers will see it….
Immediately, several of us wanted to help, but how? We talked about what had happened so far, and how whilst we had been finding out about Gabriel we had also been look at, making and playing with toys. We already had so many skills, we felt we could help. We became a team. We are The Toymakers!
At the bottom of the poster, there was an email address. We all decided to send an email back, asking if we could help. To be extra professional, we tried to use our new skill from our Literacy learning, and include ‘because’ in our sentence.
Whilst we were waiting for our reply from Gabriel, we got some work done in our office. We had lots of shelves, but they were empty. In Maths, we had been working on ‘Place Value’. One of the important parts of this learning is what is called one-to-one correspondence or sometimes called ‘grouping by matching’. To fill the shelves, it was simple, one toy on each shelf. Each row had to have the same type of toy, or it would be disorganised.
Unfortunately, the shelves weren’t full and the toys were in a muddle. Together, we sorted this out. Some were simple, one car on each shelf, but some needed a bit more thought. For example, the xylophones didn’t have beaters, the buckets didn’t have spades and the carriages didn’t have horses, so we had to add in the other parts and make sure each had what was missing!
In the office, we sorted through some toys with wheels. We really enjoyed playing with them first, then we had a go at drawing some. Although this was an important part of our work as Toymakers, it also will help us with our writing, as next in our work we will be writing about wheeled toys!
We put the wheeled toys together on a shelf, in our office.
Last week, The Toymakers sent Gabriel an email saying they’d like to help him. He sent a reply saying he’d love to meet us and invited us to his workshop on Wednesday. We were really excited. We talked about what we thought he needed help with, but realised he hadn’t actually said what he needed help with. Imagine if he wanted help to clean or cook, we aren’t experts in this, so would we be the perfect team? In preparation for the meeting, we planned some questions to ask. Luckily, we have been learning about questions in our Literacy!
We arrived at the workshop, and waited. When Gabriel arrived he was very nervous, but excited to talk to us. He was holding a photo album. He explained that he had started out making toys in 2010 when his grandson was born. He made a wooden rattle and his baby grandson loved it. His daughter, the baby’s mum, asked if Grandad Gabriel could make a toy for every birthday, as a tradition. So, for ten years he did. We found out that 10 years is called a decade.
Sadly, when Gabriel’s grandson turned 11, he no longer wanted a wooden toy. He wanted a PlayStation 5. Gabriel seemed very sad about it, but luckily, his friend Doris had already asked him if he’d like to sell toys in her shop. So, in 2020 he started making toys for a toy shop. He didn’t stop making toys.
Gabriel had to leave, so he said he would leave his precious photo album for us to look at.
When we looked at the photo album, the pages were empty. This seemed strange, given that it was so important. We could see each birthday balloon, there were photos of toys and dates, but nothing was in order. We decided we could sort it out.
First we ordered the numbered balloons, which we’re very good at because we have been learning this in Maths. Next, we matched the photos to the birthday. Finally, we put the dates in order, which helped us with our history learning because we could put them into chronological order.
The problem was, the photos of his grandson opening them were blank. What could we do?
We went to give Gabriel his photo album, but when we got to the workshop he was in a panic. He had a pile of order forms from the shop, but was getting behind because he had work to do with his website.
We offered to help with the order forms. Doris had ordered one more of each toy. One more is part of our Maths learning, so we definitely could help!
We completed the order forms and Gabriel was relieved.
After sorting the order forms, we wanted to know some more about Gabriel’s website. We found out that Gabriel stated selling online in 2023. He had only been doing it for a year.
We found out that WWW means World Wide Web. We found out that we need the internet to use the World Wide Web.
We talked about shopping online. All of us knew about shopping online. Some of us used Amazon, Tesco, Asda, clothes shops and Uber for online shopping.
To help us understand Gabriel’s website, we created a representation. We decided where to put all the parts and created the pictures of the toys for sale.
What is a review? We found out when people like your work, they can leave a review. Gabriel had 39 five star reviews.
When we tried to look at them, they were all muddled! We had to try and sort out the sentences to make sense! This challenged us to use our reading skills. It was tricky, but we did it.
Then, we used our shape knowledge from Maths with Miss Davies to help us make stars. Did you know you can make stars with two triangles?
To help us understand History, we have built a timeline. We are using it to help us understand how things change, but also, to keep all the changes in order.
We know that from 2010 to 2020 Gabriel made toys for his grandson, so we put that on our timeline. In 2018 and 2019 the children were born, so we put that on our timeline too.
We placed each decade on the timeline to show some other dates. We were able to put Miss Sleem and Mrs Styling’s year of birth on the timeline. We also began exploring some other fascinating facts…
We are going to use our timeline to show our understanding of History. We will keep adding to it. We have talked about how BC mean ‘before Christ’ and that BCE means similar, but it’s not a Christian event.
In Miss Davies’ Mantle the children heard of flood that had affected a workshop…. Little did we know, the flood was happening in Gabriel’s workshop.
Gabriel left us a note, with an envelope, but what did it say?
Gabriel has been so busy. To help him keep up with his orders, he asked us to look at some orders. Some customers asked for more, others, ordered fewer. This helped us with our Maths learning too, because ‘fewer’ is new to us. We discovered this is a smaller number of objects.
We sorted them into fewer, more and the same.
When we took the order forms back to Gabriel, we discovered the flood. Gabriel was so worried. In the morning, the puddle was small, but over the day it got bigger and bigger. We watched back the CCTV and could see what happened. We created a representation of the burst pipe by piecing together a trail of water, travelling down the pipe and creating a large puddle.
The flood was really slowing Gabriel down, waiting for things to dry, getting toys made and sending out other orders was taking too long and he new his customers would be getting fed up of waiting. He tried to put up a message on his website, but he as too late….
Sadly, customers who were expecting their orders or had been waiting a while were starting to leave unhappy reviews. We noticed some which were 1 or 2 stars and knew how disappointed Gabriel would be. We sorted the reviews into less than 3 stars, more than 3 stars and equal to 3 stars. What a shame for Gabriel…
We decided to ask Gabriel if he wanted more help. We sent a text explaining what had happened with his reviews, and asked him if he knew about how bad reviews can ruin your online reputation.
He replied really quickly and said he would like us to make the toys and send them out. What an exciting opportunity and chance to show our skills in the commission.
We created the order forms, designing a specific toy, creating a customer and an order number. We had to get this right. We used our Art skills from earlier in the story to explore playful making with a specific outcome planned and designed.
The Toymakers got on with their work, creating various toys, keeping their designs in mind.
After completing the orders for Gabriel, we got them sent out and hoped that he’d receive some improvements in his reviews.
Soon after completing Gabriel’s task, he contacted us to say the reviews were perfect and that he had something to give us to say thank you. Outside of the story, we created rosettes that we were able to use in the drama.
We arrived at Gabriel’s shop and one by one he invited us to receive our rosette. We were so happy to have completed this commission,
Now that we have completed our commission, it was time to move onto a new problem to solve. We saw an advert for an open day, inviting people to a local toy shop that originally opened in 1960! It was a a family run business and the original owner had handed over the responsibility to her granddaughter, Tilly.
Tilly advertised the open day, and we were keen to go. We also created a newspaper article that we used back in the story. This helped us to practice our alliteration skills in Literacy e.g, Fabulous Family Fun, Time Together Today and Toys, Toys, Toys! We also practiced our ordering in chronological order skills, creating a timeline of pictures over the decades that the shop had been open.
We arrived at the open day and gathered around the shop to see what Tilly would say. There was a large golden ribbon and Tilly did a speech before cutting the ribbon.
We were all busy looking around the shop, when we overheard two people talking. The lady said, “The shop isn’t as good as it used to be, I think it will close.”
We were really shocked. We wanted to tell Tilly, so headed to her office once the open day was finished. When we got to the office, Tilly was on the phone, so we waited. We accidentally overheard her conversation, and discovered that she was worried because there were less sales than last year and her mum had sold more. She was really worried. We had a look at the sales and were able to use our Maths skills to explore the terms more and less when comparing amounts.
When she finished her call we knocked the door to speak to her. We told her what the lady had said, and then said we’d accidentally heard her talking to her mum. She was disappointed, she felt as though we’d been eavesdropping or spying! Lots of us tried to explain, but she was too cross…. Until one of us said, “we just want to help because we are toy makers”. Tilly was interested in our skills and gave us a challenge to create pocket money toys. She wanted them to be Halloween pocket money toys!
We said we would love to and began planning and making straight away.
Tilly was so impressed with our work. She wanted us to display them in the shop window. She had some expectations, which included, a white background, no clutter and in the centre of the background. This is one of our objectives within our Art curriculum, so it was a perfect opportunity to explore this in a meaningful context. We captured photos of this work.
When Tilly saw our photos, she was excited to get them on display. She asked us to get them in the window as quickly as possible. Whilst we were doing this we found a page from an old magazine, but it was very creased and damaged. We took it out for a closer look and decided to try and draw what it looked like when it was first printed. We showed it to Tilly and she said whilst she was tidying, she had found many pages. She said we were welcome to look at them.
We opened up the envelope of pages, and discovered lots of pictures of toys and some dates from the 1960s. We decided to try and put it together, to show what it would have looked like all those years ago…
When we showed Tilly the magazines, her Nan was there too. Her name is Doris and she opened the shop in 1960. Doris said that she loved the toys back then, but even though time had passed, toys hadn’t changed all that much. They just looked more modern. She explained that Barbie, tanks, trains, dolls, cars and Scalextric are still popular now, as they were in 1960! She said teddies and plushies are popular now, and so are figures, but in 1960 there were similar toys, just different designs. She invited us to look in her stock room to see the modern toys. We created a representations based on our expert knowledge of modern toys.
At the back of the stockroom we discovered an old box. We took a photo of it and sent it to Tilly. She replied and said that her Nan said we could open it and have a look.
We opened the box to discover what seemed to be very old toys. We made observations that they were dusty, dirty and in some places scratched or damaged a little! Some were brand new, but covered in dust. We wanted to get them out and look more closely, and of course play with them!
Instantly, we had an idea that these toys were old and lots of us wondered if they were originally from the 1960s, but how would we check? What did we have that would help us to identify their age? Had we made anything with old toys in, that would help us with this question?
THE MAGAZINES!
We decided to look in the magazines to see if we could find the toys we’d found in the box and to our surprise, we did! All of the toys were in the magazine! This was SO exciting. We invited Mr Kieran to come and see our discovery….
Mr Kieran told us that he actually was born near this time, and that he can remember looking at magazines like this, choosing his most wanted toys.
He invited us to watch some drama, where he was the young boy flicking through the magazine, choosing what he’d love to have. Some of us were able to imagine the things he might say, as he turned each page, pointing at the pictures and showing if he’s love them, or not. Some of us said the words, as if the boy was saying them.
After our discovery and exploring through drama, we were able to make some comparisons. We drew a picture of something we enjoyed playing with now, and found an example of something similar from the 1960s. We were then able to say that they were popular in 1960, and still popular now! We noticed the modern ones had changed in appearance, or now required batteries. We wrote a short report to show this.
We wanted to tell Tilly what we had found, so we sent her an email. Through drama, we observed Doris seeing our email arrive and opening it. Unfortunately, whilst we were watching, Doris saw another email from an unknown sender. Doris opened the email from an unknown sender, and it wasn’t nice. Danger messages opened on the screen and Doris was really frightened. Luckily, she knew to tell someone if she saw something she didn’t like on the screen and she explained to Tilly what had happened.
Tilly told Doris she needs internet safety help. Doris explained that in her lifetime, technology had developed so much that she hadn’t really kept up with it. Out of our role, we explored the knowledge of internet safety, building on from what we had learnt in Reception, and agreed on some rules. These were then shared with Doris, in the drama.
Doris told us that the internet was very new to her. She told us about the inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. We discovered that he was an expert in technology and that he created the World Wide Web and the first ever webpage.
After learning more about being safer online, Doris decided to search 1960s toys. She was absolutely shocked to see that some original 1960 toys were exceptionally priced. Some were £600! She wanted to replicate the matchbox toys, in mini boxes, for a pocket money price, so she commissioned us to do it!
To help us to be experts in this area of toy making, we had to research how the cars worked. Out DT curriculum needs us to understand the way wheels and axles work, so we began exploring this, using paper and straws to explore the purpose of a wheel, axle and axle holder.
Once we knew about this, we were able to design a product that would actually work. We designed using shapes on paper, then transferred these skills on the iPad to explore our computing curriculum. We needed to learn how to create pictures using a digital paint program. We used https://paintz.app.
We learnt how to use shapes to create our design.
We used a peg for the chassis, straws for axle holders, cocktail sticks for axles and buttons for wheels.
The box was a really important part of the process, because matchbox toys were famous because of the box they came in too. So we used the paint app to create a picture of our toy and write or type the word Matchbox on the page. Then, we created a box that the toy would actually fit in. Doris was overjoyed with our work and they went on sale in the shop.
Our commission is complete. We can’t wait for the Spring Term to begin our new story and find out what our new expert team will be!