Yesterday I wanted to use the computer to do some prep for September, however other half decided he also wanted to use

MY computer. Being the kind of person I am, I let him.

So I tried to do some crafting, had a serious lack of inspiration initially until I decided to combine my two favourite things – craft and geography.

Out came the felt, scissors, pencils, paper, glue… I basically made a mess.

I decided to make a felt model of a destructive volcano to aid learning, primarily targeted at year 7 but ended up thinking that some of my older students with appreciate it.

I’ve thought it could be used in a variety of ways firstly by putting the volcano together and then

• labelling the parts of the volcano
• matching process descriptions to the model
• using the model to create a stop motion video to show the formation process

I’ve decided I’m going to create more over the holidays for other topics to demonstrate processes and parts of a physical feature. If felt were so expensive I’d have the students making them but budgets and all…

It got me thinking though, why do we not employ many primary ideas into secondary? I’ve seen felt models being used in numerous primary schools, they help younger children to learn so why are we not utilising it in KS3 and possibly KS4? We get out the play-dough to demonstrate formation processes? Why not felt? Too childish perhaps? I leave that as a pondering thought.

What do you think? Felt, useful for the secondary classroom?