Fostering felines

From the middle of spring until early winter thousands of unwanted newborn kittens are handed into the SPCA. This Connected article covers how students at Sir Douglas Bader School in Auckland responded to a challenge from the SPCA for a device to help comfort and feed newborn kittens.

This article covers:

• kittens’ early development
• the level of care required
• design, prototyping, modelling, assembling the final products and refining the prototype
• collaboration with a product development engineer from Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
• further ideas.

Key ideas

Some of the key ideas covered in this article:

• Technology – the design cycle and the design brief criterea
• Nature of science – to help them make decisions, scientists look for reliable evidence and consider what other scientists have found out
• Science – requirements of a kitten: nourishment, warmth and shelter.

Check your school library for the article from the 2020 level 4 Connected journal Feeling the Heat, download it as a Google slide presentation or order it from the Ministry of Education.

The teacher support material (TSM) can be downloaded from TKI (Word and PDF files available, click on 'Look inside this issue').

There are two learning activities that support the exploring technology aspects of the New Zealand Curriculum:

• Furthering the feline-fostering designs
• Responding to a need.