Knee Deep: Designing and Constructing a Water Pond

Aimed at primary level, this resource provides a design and technology project which links to work on the properties of materials and aspects of environmental geography. Children design and make a model of a pond and discover more about the work of engineers throughout the process. In the first lesson the context for problem it set by reading a short story which leads into an exploration of the main features of ponds and the main problems the project will face. Children then investigate the permeability of different components of soil and everyday materials, carrying out tests to see how quickly water passes through them. In a third lesson children work in groups to design and make a model of the pond applying their knowledge of materials from previous lessons. In a final lesson children compare and evaluate the different models and consider how the science knowledge was applied to solve the problem. They then propose possible improvements and think about how to organize the work to create a real pond in the school garden. 

This resource was produced by The European project ENGINEER.Twenty-six institutions from twelve countries have committed to this challenging initiative of inspiring children to choose engineering for learning and fun. These resources were produced under the funding of the 7th framework programme, as part of ENGINEER project, contract № 288989. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.