Decorating bikes for Technology

 This term the whole junior school have been working on a technology unit. We were posed the following problem:

"We have been asked to decorate our bikes to participate in the Community Country Fair, and would like to be a part of this, but we have no budget."

 We brainstormed a number of possible themes that we could use to decorate our bikes and then took some time to think about which theme we might choose for our own bike.

Some of the possible themes were;

• sparkles & tinsel
• nature or camouflage
• fantasy or mythical
• spooky or horror
• transport
• future
• animals
• colours

 We had to decide on our theme, and then we were grouped according to our theme choice. There we children from years 0-8 in each of the groups. We set off in our groups and began the planning stage of our work.

We began by drawing what we envisaged our completed bike to look like. We labelled parts of our our bike and began to create a list of the resources that we would need to source, recycle or borrow.

 We had some criteria that we had to meet with the design of our bike:

we had to

• decorate our bike with no budget
• source our own resources from home
• be able to ride our bike correctly and safely
• be able to restore our bike to its exact state prior to the decoration (so no permanent decorations could be used e.g. paint or vivid)

 We also had to consider the mechanics of our bike as we created our plan. It was important that we could still steer our bike correctly, that our brakes functioned correctly and that our chain, spokes etc were all able to work properly.

 When the planning stage was complete we all brought our bikes and resources along to school for the practical session of our unit.  

 We spent 1 and a half hours working away outside in the sunshine creating marvellously decorated bikes. Many of us discovered that our plans had to be changed instantly when we began to apply the resources to the bike. Many of our ideas needed to be modified in order to work well.

 Everybody worked within their theme groups which meant there were some opportunities to swap and share resources.

 It was a wonderful day, and exciting to see our junior and senior students working alongside each other on similar projects.

With everything cleaned up it was time for the students to put their completed creations on display.

 Abby created a wonderful dog, complete with ears, tails and paws.

 Rubie chose the theme of sparkles and tinsel..

  and so did Lucie.

  Max chose nature and camouflage...

  and so did Hamish.

  Josie also covered her bike in sparkles and tinsel...

  and so did Lanie...

  and so did Amber Rose.

  Emma chose to decorate her bike using the theme of Christmas.

  Connie covered her bike in colourful pom poms, stars and sparkles.

  Jenaya had stars, hearts and tinsel.

  Toby had created a dinosaur themed bike.

  Paris had used streamers, papers and pom poms, not to mention a fabulous basket filled with soft toys.

  Jessica had also used the Christmas theme to decorate her bike.

  Kate had created a 'my little pony' bike with matching helmet.

  Alyssa had used the theme of sparkles, tinsel, ribbons and balloons.

  Blake's bike was decorated using nature and camouflage...

  and so had Samara.

  Lucy used colours, sparkles and balloons to decorate her bike.

Venessa chose a theme of Christmas which included fairy lights.

Alesana used tin foil to decorate his bike as though it come from the future.

 Following the grand parade all of the bikes were parked up awaiting pick up.

Many of the students kept their bikes decorated and took it to the Lawrence Country Fair on the following Sunday. Eveyone who entered was given a drink bottle, a fizzy drink and an Easter egg. There were also overall prizes for each age group.

It was a lot of fun, and everyone enjoyed being part of such a terrific technology unit.