The Toymaking activity to inspire the Design and Technology curriculum in the Primary school

playing with a traitional wind up toy
Pietrel Bruegel in his Children's Game painting (1650) depicted this boy playing with a wind-up toy made with some wooden sticks and a big walnut shell, a string to pull and activate the mechanism. Like the other children that are playing around him with different toys, he is totally absorbed in his activity, looking at the spinning of the moving parts of his toy.
handmade balancing toy
The Handmade Balancing toy.
From the children’s perspective the quality of this toy to stand on balance under abnormal circumstances makes it looks like as a ”magical” object.
wind up bottle toy
A Bottle Wind-Up toy.
With the passing of the time the natural resource has become more valuable compare to the everyday items and also less accessible to the children.

The image of the boy highlighted in the picture on the right shows us how children of the Middle Ages were well acquainted with technology of that time, making their own toys and using hand-tools to transform natural material like wood, independently from the adult’s support, supervision and control.
Today the majority of children in our society play with bought toys, which are much more advanced technologically and mass produced compared to those of the past.
Modern toys are providing children with fun and are confining the players within the consumer role, stifling and disabling their manual skills, as well as their self-confidence to use their creativity and practical skills.

a child bending wire cutting cardboard cirlce drawing a circle scrunching up paper stretching insulating tape

During the past few years I have had the opportunity to explore many smart applications of the basic technology that can be efficiently applied at ordinary and recyclable materials in order to transform them into toys.
The creativity of primary schools children was the best friend in my experimental journey, aiming to find sustainable and accessible ways to deliver the Design and Technology curriculum.
In the meantime, for these children there was the chance to learn something about basic science via a playful hands-on approach at the school curriculum.
Simple questions such as: why does the handmade Balancing toy stand and swing on its axis without falling down? or, what makes a Spinning Top spin longer and faster than another one?, help children to unveil knowledge and principles which govern the universe, the gears of their bicycles, and as well as all of our lives.

crank bottle car bottle catapult pulling the rocket man bottle cranck cyclist playing with a Top
bttle car with axel out of focus
catapult with elastic mechanism
rocket man with simple lever mechanis
cyclist with carnak mechanis
playing with a Top made with cardboard

Therefore, in my workshops the teaching and learning of basic manual skills is an essential first step (a precursor) to get into an independent toy-designing and toy-making activity.
Firstly the children learn how to transform recyclable materials safely using basic manual tools.
Meanwhile, children make simple traditional toys (such us the Spinning Top, the Balancing toy, the Cup and Ball, the Little Bottle Car...) they also learn the basic principles of gravity, forces and friction, acquainting themselves at a basic common dictionary and at the use of simple hand-tools.
After that they progress into the designing and making of toys that use handmade crank and pneumatic mechanisms, levers, wheels and axles, camshaft and wind up mechanisms...and so on.

 

 

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