A Fantastic end to our Antarctica topic, sledging in the (fake) snow!

Our Antarctic adventure came to an exciting close with the testing of our handmade wooden sledges. Since the beginning of term, the children have evaluated a range of sledge designs, noting the best features, and used their research to plan their own super-fast sledge. Jasleen 5S stated, “My sledge will be the best because it is small and light!” The children worked safely with saws and glue guns to construct their sledges, exploring using triangles to strengthen the joints. It was a perfect opportunity to extend our understanding of friction and test the sledges on a range of surfaces to discover which created the least friction. Miss O’Brien, Year 5 teacher, said, “It was fantastic to see accurate measuring with force meters and children thinking about why different surfaces/sledges had different results”. We even made fake snow and tried the sledges on that too.