Within the discovery zone the children began to explore an interest in the Titanic. They had been exploring different kinds of boats when they came across a photo of the Titanic, this then sparked an interest in learning more about it. Using the internet to research, the children were able to watch videos that told them the story of the Titanic. They could share what they had learned, retelling the story to their peers and creating an even bigger interest. The children learned about what the Titanic was, how it sank and were even interested in how many survivors there were.
After learning about how the Titanic was built, the children felt inspired to build their own ships. They worked as a group to create a large model Titanic using the building blocks. The children compared the model Titanic to pictures of the real one and added the funnels, mast and anchor. The more the children-built models of the ship the more detailed they became. They went from creating the boat with blocks to using the junk modelling, sticks and peas and playdough to make various other models.
While researching boats the children noticed that the different boats had different flags on them. They researched and found out that this told you where the boat had come from. The children created their own flags to add the model ships and learned about their heritages as they created flags for Scotland, the United Kingdom and the Philippines. A visit to the Transport Museum in Glasgow with a group of children was the next stage of their project. They saw many kinds of boats and found out about their use. They also got to visit the Tall Ship and were so excited to go aboard a real boat. The children compared features of the Tall Ship to features of the Titanic.
