Over the last two weeks in Year 5 all four classes have been working on a DT project. We have created Viking longship models, which move! By turning a crank, a cam rotates, which then makes the Viking on board the longship look like he is rowing. 

We based our design on various examples of moving toys that we brought into school to look at. We discovered that a lot of these work by the rotary motion of a cam, which has an off-centre hole, creating linear motion in an attached shaft.  We used this same idea in our models. 

The models took two whole days to make and there was a lot of hard work involved! Firstly, we had to accurately measure and saw all the wood to create the frame. Then we had to glue it all together using card triangles to attach the corners firmly. This took  nearly the whole first day! On the second day, we had to create the mechanism in order to make the man move, and then figure out how to attach it to the frame. It was quite complicated but we all managed it in the end. The final stage was to cover the frame and hide all the inner workings, then attach our longboat, mast and sail. 

Our finished boats look amazing, and our teachers and us are very proud of what we have achieved. Have a look at the pictures to see some of the steps involved, and some of the finished products.