How fast should your buggy be?
5
Helping with aesthetics
It is important that the children produce toy vehicles that look good. You can help in several ways. You can provide visual stimulus and reference information in the form of a class image board showing lots of different sorts of vehicles. The website in the More? card at the bottom of this page will help you do this.
The three sample nets provided in the unit enable most sorts of vehicle to be considered. It is important to discuss with individual children what they want their vehicle to look like and how they can make it look like that. The overall shape and colour will be important factors. If the children can use coloured card for the shell net this avoids the necessity of laying down a base colour which is both time consuming and difficult to do well.
Adding detail will give a sense of realism to the toy vehicles. The website in the Try this! card at the foot of the page will give you some good reference examples. Children will find adding details difficult to do well if they try to do it by hand. Using word processing software on the computer enables children to produce lettering that looks professional. It needs to be printed, cut out and carefully stuck in place. If, for some reason, this does not work out first time it is a simple matter to reprint and try again. Similarly simple drawing software can be used to produce a variety of 'go faster' stripes and decorations.