Dundonald Primary School Pedal-Powered Workshop

We had a very full on day at Dundonald Primary School in Wimbledon today, having been asked to do a pedal-powered workshop to support the school’s Energy Awareness day.

We kicked-off with a presentation to the entire school where we talked about some of the amazing projects we’ve been doing over the last few months, including our work in Africa with the pedal-powered cinema. The children were really fascinated to hear that many schools in Africa really have no access to electricity! We then discussed where energy comes from and what we can all do to protect this precious resource. It was great to see that there were some serious eco-champions amongst the children.

We split each of the years 1 to 6 in groups of three. Each group then had a ten minute session on pedal powered smoothie making, Scalextric and a watt challenge.

At the the pedal-power smoothie making station it was great to see the children learning about the conversion of energy from their breakfast into the mechanical energy to make a super smooth smoothie! It was then onto the race track. Two children in a head to head battle of speed and control. Each one pedaling faster and faster to power the scalextric cars around the track. many of the children were also facinated by the low voltage installation laid out on the floor allowing them to see all the circuitry and wiring required to safely convert their pedal energy into electrical energy and zoom the cars off the track.

Finally the watt challenge which started with a question: What would be easier to power, 1 incandescent light bulb or 4 incandescent light bulbs? The winner got to pedal first and test their answer. Because they were using their own energy to power the light bulbs, they could physically feel the difference between powering a single light bulb and more. You can imagine that there were lots of hands up for the next question!

So after seeing around 170 amazing children we were happily exhausted! We had a brilliant day and want to thank Dundonald Primary School for making us feel very welcome.

“I just wanted to take the opportunity again to say thank you for today. The children had a wonderful time and all the teachers were very pleased with the workshops and sense of excitement they created! It certainly became the highlight of our sustainable week as I'd hoped. “ Clare Savage, Sustainable Co-ordinator, Dundonald Primary School