KS2 Art and Design / DT: Designing a portable bird hide

ABBIE HUTTY: Hi, I'm Abbie and I'm a mechanical engineer. I design the structural parts of spacecraft, like satellites. Today, I'm at a lovely nature reserve with pupils from Wroxham School in Potters Bar and park ranger Debs Allbrook. Our design challenge is to make a portable bird hide for children to use.

Firstly, we need to ask Debs what the most important design features are of a bird hide.

CHRISTOPHER: How big do you think our hide should be?

DEBS ALLBROOK: So, I think your hide won't be this big. I think your hide only needs to fit maybe four children in it.

DANIEL: So how camouflaged do you think it should be?

DEBS: I think it needs to really blend in with your surroundings so that the birds can't tell you're there. So you want to be hidden from the birds, that's why we call it a bird hide.

ABBIE: Before we start making our bird hide, I want us to look at some different types of temporary structure. What about this one?

DANIEL: Well, it's very obvious, so the birds could see us and be afraid of us.

ABBIE: Right, so this one's completely different. So what can you tell me about this one?

CHRISTOPHER: It's made of wood.

HUAN: There's not many holes you could, like, see the birds through. You could cut out some holes round the top.

EDEN: Yes, that would be a lot better.

ABBIE: We split into two teams. The design team has to come up with two options for our bird hide. This is an interesting design. What would be good about this for a bird hide?

CHRISTOPHER: It's triangular.

ABBIE: Why would a square-based pyramid be a good idea?

EDEN: Well, it's good because it doesn't take up a lot of space.

ABBIE: So do you want to tell me about this one?

CHRISTOPHER: Well, it's the box design, so it's a cube.

ABBIE: And what about over on this side?

DANIEL: That's a window.

ABBIE: So that we can see the birds.

ABBIE: Everyone helps to make models of our two designs and then the design team decides which one is best. Right, now we've finished our model of the pyramid design, so what might be the less good things about this design?

EDEN: Probably the less good things - if two people were to walk there, they can't really move around, like, they'll have to walk and then just go down gradually.

ABBIE: So, this is our second design. This is the cube design. What do we think about this one?

EDEN: With this one you can move all the way round because it's all the same size. It's a good structure as well.

ABBIE: Yep. Is it nice and strong?

ALL: Yeah.

ABBIE: We prefer the cube design. Now it's time for the fabric team to get to work. OK, now we want to think about what fabrics we're going to make our bird hide out of. So what do we think about this one?

FABRIC RUSTLES

GIRLS: It's really noisy.

ABIGAIL: And it's not camouflaged.

ABBIE: No, this is quite a bright colour, isn't it? So this is a different fabric that we could use for our bird hide. So what do we think about this one?

ANNE-MARIE: It doesn't make a lot of noise.

ABBIE: No, so it's quite quiet, isn't it?

HUAN: It's not waterproof, though, because it's made of, like, felt-ish type material.

ABBIE: Yeah, so it might soak up the water. So this is the last type of fabric that we might be able to use for our bird hides. What do we think about this one?

ANNE-MARIE: So, it's soft and it's camouflaged.

ABBIE: Yep, so what about this?

ANNE-MARIE: And it's quiet.

ALL: Quite quiet.

ABBIE: So it's very good on camouflage and it's quiet, but… Is it waterproof?

HUAN: What about waterproof?

ABBIE: I think we might need to test that and make sure. Are we ready? Is any coming through?

HUAN: None's coming through.

ABIGAIL: So that means it's waterproof.

ABBIE: Having made our models and selected the fabric, now it's time to make the prototype. First, we have to make two squares for the top and the bottom of the cube.

ANNE-MARIE: Is that sturdy?

CHILDREN: Yes, that's fine. OK.

ABBIE: Bamboo canes are brilliant to use as supporting crossbeams… and taut string will support the fabric roof. We can put the roof on.

DEBS: So, which school do you go to?

ABBIE: Park Ranger Debs has found two young bird-watchers who want to test the new bird hide.

DEBS: They're both in St Albans, are they?

BIRDWATCHER: It's good because you can see from all angles, so you can see everywhere.

ABBIE: All in all, I think our bird hide achieves all our aims, but there's one more feature that we need to test. We're going to see how we move it. You can just carry it off. It's portable. And here are the rest of our achievements. Well done, teams!