"Present children with a collection of toys. Ask them to suggest how to start them moving, to test their ideas and to decide whether they were right."

That's one of the quotes from the QCA document at this level.

The site below is excellent for that purpose. It could also be used as a start of a D & T unit for older children.

http://www.burleyms.demon.co.uk/TecToys/tectoys.html

This site is excellent to demonstrate how toys move.

If you have a video projector or whiteboard these would be good pages to demonstrate. Of course a good collection of moving toys woulkd also be excellent!

Making simple pop-up cards of spaceships might also be a useful activity.

The following Flash movie may also be used to get children talking about synonyms for movements.

http://www.sln.org/pieces/cych/apollo%2010/teachers/resources/actions.html .

This could be followed up by groups making a display of movement words around pictures of spacecraft.

The main thing here is to get children to predict what will happen and to observe what did actually happen. The words push and pull are useful to substitute for " force" with younger children.

In terms of this site - ask them what causes the rockets to move?

A good experiment would be to make a balloon rocket.

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