Shawn Rushby, the Dealer Principal at Stratstone, Perth, Jaguar’s largest group of car dealers in the UK, recently asked the pupils at Hillside Primary School, Dundee, if they would like to decorate the company’s Showroom tree for Christmas. Their teacher, Ruth Mitchell, then swung into action and not only organised the young drivers to deliver the goods for Stratstone’s, she also got them to design their own themed based race circuits – the theme being ‘Winter’, as a spin off (no pun intended!) to the whole project.
Ruth told us “This is a wonderful opportunity for our kids to work realistically with an outside company that obviously cares about children in the same way as we do. We designed and made decorations for the tree and Shawn also asked us if we would make something to sit on the salesmen’s desks. As the Jaguar colours are silver and black we went for that theme. We made, wreaths from old jigsaw puzzles and made the berries from very small red Jaguar Car pictures, we made gift boxes, J ‘s from hamma beads, doilies with Jag pictures on them, baubles that we hand drew black Jaguar cats on and wrote the word ‘Jaguar’ on the other side. We attempted wheels(not quite as great as the materials we had planned to use we could not get hold of in time!). They made Christmas Trees for the desks. Kanza and Morven put a huge effort into designing and making a tree topper in the shape of a Jaguar car. They made it 3D and were really pleased with the outcome. We had lots of fun doing this – it was focussed and relevant and I think the tree looks great, but then I am biased as it’s my kids work!”
The tree now stands proudly in the Showroom and the winning circuit design was based on a snowman. Stratstone very kindly sponsored a prize of a remote control model of a Jaguar XK and one of the pictures below shows the winner with the Head of Hillside Primary, Jackie Campbell. The other pictures show the various decorations that the children made – click on them to enlarge.
As Mrs. Campbell said, “This just shows what can be achieved with ‘Cars Maths in Motion’ – it just needs a little bit of thought and planning to get so much relevant work out of the children. I would also like to thank Stratstone’s for their support too – it has meant so much to the pupils involved in the project.”
Well done all of you for showing such brilliant innovation and well done to Shawn and Miss Mitchell for giving them the opportunity in the first place.
P.S. from Brian at Challenge HQ. You will hear more about that ‘Snowman’ track in the New Year – just watch this space!!
