I thought I’d share this quick and easy lesson that I did with the children last week. We have been doing a lot of short projects and this is one that I had intended to run as a group event for the children and their friends, but due to the current restrictions, I wasn’t able to.
We have covered inventors in the last year when we did this topic for our regular speaking and listening group. I was glad to see that they could still remember a lot of what we had covered then.
Materials & Resources
There aren’t really too many resources needed for this lesson. I used a fab book and had a few bits prepared but the preparation is quite low for this one;
- The Story of Inventions book
- Inventions matching activity from Teaching Packs
- Junk model materials
The Lesson
We started by talking about what the children think an invention is and we talked about some of the inventions that have been created or have become mainstream during my lifetime (internet, mobile phones, Netflix) and we talked about how different things looked, and how different it might look again when they’re my age.
We then read the Story of Inventions Books together. I really like this series of books. It does such an excellent job of presenting some complex and sophisticates ideas into a really manageable bite-size and accessible approach for the children. We have all the books in this series (except space) and they are all excellent.
We talked about the different inventions and why they were so important at the time (and how they continue to be important) and what other changes they lead to.
We then had a think about how inventions happen. To solve problems or sometimes they happen by accident! We had a think about some of the things we might like to see invented and whether they might ever happen.
We then had a look at the matching activity, to match the invention up and I have some bits that I had prepared with key inventions and the inventor’s name for them to try and pair up. We also had a look at our History Heroes Cards.
Finally, the children decided to do some junk modelling! They’ve been very inspired by the Maddie Moate and Greg Foot Live YouTube series this last few weeks so they set about inventing bits for a rocket (which was good as that’s our next topic to look at!)
Other Things to Explore
For other ideas, you could download the teaching notes for the Story of Inventions book (available here). There are some great ideas on here that I’ve got plans to use when we can meet in groups again.
You could create an inventors tool box and have an inventors area ready for moments of creativity. It can be as simple as having some scissors, glue, tape and craft sticks etc stored in a specially decorated box.
Finally, you could research in more depth one of the inventors and/or inventions mentioned in the book. I want to look at the medical inventions in more detail with the children and plan to do some work around vaccinations, penicillin, the NHS etc and place them in the historical and social context of their time. I need to do a little planning on this first but it’s one I plan to look at.
