Levers and Linkages in Year 4

This half term our Design Technology topic is ‘levers and linkages’. Our final product will be a Christmas card incorporating either a lever or a linkage mechanism. This week we have been experimenting with different types of levers and linkages. We were given the instructions to make four different items; a moving dragon, moving flags, a snapping crocodile or a waving hand. We had to follow the instructions really carefully to ensure the mechanism worked.

To make our mechanisms we used coloured card, split pins to secure, scissors to cut the card and a ruler and a pencil to measure out the materials we needed. We found that the hardest part was securing the card with the split pins. The lesson gave us a fantastic insight into the two mechanisms and will help us to design our Christmas cards next week.