Our new Design and Technology Topic has started. Toucans have been challenged to construct a Fire Engine! They have have already researched existing products thinking about the following questions:
What do the Fire Engines that they have seen look like? Year Two drew a picture of a fire engine that they had seen.
What do they think they are made out of? Year Two thought that they could be made from glass, metal and rubber. Some Toucans decided that these materials could be welded together.

The children were asked if our ‘product’ had got any special features? We made a very long list including hoses, ladders, they were painted bright colours, sirens to alert other road users they needed to get through, water tanks and writing at the front. Toucans did some market research amongst their classmates including what people liked about existed Fire Engines, what could be improved and what their product would definitely have to keep!

They have now designed their very own fire engine on graph paper trying to include all of the important features. They look amazing!

Friday was a very busy day in Toucan class as we finally reached the point in our learning in DT this term where it was time to make our final product. Our first DT project in Year 2 was cooking. We have learnt a lot about different types of food over the last term, especially healthy foods. Therefore we decided to make healthy pizzas for our cooking in DT.  

Pizza? Healthy? You may be wondering why! Well after lots of discussions as a whole class about what we would like to make and what our favourite foods were, we all came down to the decision that pizza was up there with one of the most popular dishes with Year 2!  

As we wanted to keep within our topic of healthy foods, we discussed what smart swaps we could make to make our pizzas that little bit healthier, we chatted through several ideas before we reached our final decision. In the end we decided to use mini wraps for our pizza as they were a lot smaller and perfect for our tiny tummies!  

We began with the most important and hygienic thing of all, which was washing our hands, before handling any food.  

We all began with one wrap each. We squeezed 1 tablespoon of tomato puree onto our wrap and spread it evenly to make our tomato base.  

We then moved onto what toppings we would like on our pizza. The three vegetable options were peppers, mushrooms and sweetcorn.  

We had to prepare our vegetables before putting them onto our pizza, so we had a quick reminder of how to cut vegetables safely before we began and chopped small chunks of pepper and added them to our pizza. Another skill we were practising was our peeling skills. Thinking of something to peel was tricky for a pizza topping, but Miss Williams’ suggestion of mushrooms was the perfect idea. We took the stalk of the mushroom out and then we were able to peel the skin off the mushroom before chopping it and adding it to our pizza. 

Then it came to the fun part; adding the pepperoni and the cheese. All the children had 5 slices of pepperoni each to add. We then had to use scales to accurately measure and weigh our cheese. The children carefully grated their cheese onto the chopping board and then added it to the bowl on the scales and weighed 40g each before sprinkling it over their pizza.  

Finally, it was cooking time. Our pizza’s only took around 10 minutes in the oven and came out looking and smelling delicious! 

A very busy but successful day all round for us and was a brilliant way to end our week. I hope everyone enjoyed the making process and more importantly eating your pizzas!