Nythe Water Powered Vehicles - Fly me to the moon

It is 40 years ago that man first stepped foot on the moon.  Last week I enjoyed spending time with our newest learners at Nythe— The  Tadpoles.  Although they didn’t believe that man had travelled to the moon or that I had once been their age , they could easily believe they could build a rocket to travel to the moon and had no problem in thinking about what they would do when they got there.  Their creativity was limitless.  And yet, as we get older this ability to be creative to solve problems gets stifled, often by the way we are trained to think at school.   The Saturday Academy doesn’t train you to think but allows you to use your natural ability to solve problems through being creative. It is a time for you and your   children to have the freedom to think; to dream up solutions to problems and  to create something fantastic  together.   You never know you might just design a rocket that could   FLY TO THE  MOON!     .

Then they had to use the IT suite to answer a series of space related questions and obtain their launch password.

Finally their vehicles were put to the test with the winner travelling 24m!

Nythe Water Rockets and Balloon Boats

As part of the Nythe Saturday Academy series, we made rockets that actually blasted into space (well they went vertically) and the families then transferred their new knowledge into making balloon boats.

Both models use recycled material. Both needed to be light weight and balanced. Both use air under pressure as their source of energy.

Nythe 3-2-1 Blastoff - Water Rocket powered vehicles

This event uses a water powered rocket in the horizontal position to create a water rocket vehicle.  By pressurising the partly-filled bottle with air and releasing it at a pre-set pressure, the jet of water will power the vehicle for up to 21m.

The overall aim of the day was to enable families to join in with their children’s learning.  The event gave parents and carers the opportunity to discover some of the design and technology skills that children enjoy learning at primary school and find out how they can support their children in developing problem solving skills.

As is usual with Learning Tree events, the vehicles were constructed by the families using recycled materials and the power was provided by water and bicycle pumps!

The school chose The Learning Tree to deliver Family Learning because we were able to offer a complete package from planning through to delivery and evaluation that met the Every Child Matters outcomes.     

As you can see from the photos  the day really did go with a blast! Click on any of these pictures to enlarge the image

The Learning Tree is working with Nythe School on a wider family learning programme which is running throughout the year. Details are available on future events. 

Water Rocket links

As part of the research into the days we found many other related websites, many featuring quite elaborate water rockets and launch systems.

If you would like to learn more about creating a learning community please email sue@learning-tree.org.uk or click here to contact us.

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