As part of British Science Week, Year 4 have been learning about cargo ships and transporting goods around the world. We found out about the Cutty Sark which was built in 1869 and the children discussed how the ship managed to transport tea from China to England all those years ago.
The children were split into small teams and challenged to investigate the best shape, size and materials to use to keep a boat afloat. All teams made a rectangle shaped boat from paper as an initial test and investigated how many pennies the boat could hold before the boat sunk.
The groups had a fantastic afternoon and made wonderful boats in numerous shapes, sizes and used materials such as cardboard, plastic, paper, foam, foil and material. The children recorded their findings and found that larger boats could distribute the weight better and therefore took longer to sink and waterproof materials helped to stop the boats letting in water.
