Float or sink?

Date: 24th Jun 2022 @ 3:57pm

Duck class were given a challenge last week to design and make a pirate ship that would float on the water. We talked about a range of different materials and discussed which ones we thought would float. The children drew their design and wrote a list of what they would need to make it. They then made their pirate ship using their design as a guide. The next day we put the pirate ships to the test! There were two parts to our test, firstly to see if the ship would float in the water and secondly to see if it would still float if we put our pirate in the boat. The children really enjoyed testing their ships and we had some fantastic discussions! Many of the children's boats floated initially, however some of them started to sink when we added the pirate. The children were surprised to see that the lego boat floated on the water. The playdough ships sank straight to the bottom and made a big mess! We decided that plastic bottles or cardboard boxes were the best materials to make the ships from. The children then thought about how successful their design was and we talked about how we would improve our ships if we did them again.