A MAP FOR ROAMER

The children in Year 1 and 2 at St. Aidan's C of E Primary School, Clock-Face, St. Helens were very excited when Roamer joined their class after the Christmas holidays. Soon a group of the Year 2 children decided that Roamer needed his own town to explore and so decided to make him his very own road mat.

Dear Go
We enjoy reading your magazine. We have all the copies in a folder in our classroom and we call it Roamer's Book.

Our teacher Mrs Jones told us that the articles in the magazine are all written by grown-ups. So we thought we'd like to write to you and tell you what we think of Roamer and the project we have done with him this term.

We got our Roamer in January 1992 and we soon found out some of the things he could do.

We like playing with the road mats and the Lego road but we soon discovered that Roamer was too big to use on these.

So we decided to make Roamer his very own mat, but first we needed to look at the mats and plans we had in school to get some ideas.

Then we set to work to draw and write about our ideas.

Here are some of our ideas.

We got a roll of strong paper and joined it together. We used two layers to make it extra strong.

We decided on the widths of the roads and we measured paper into exact Roamer lengths. We painted the roads and we experimented on the best patterns of roads. We then talked about what we wanted on the map and we made a list of what we agreed on. We then decided which part we would work on.

We found it was better to work straight on the mat as we liked looking how the mat was coming on.

We went to the fire station. "That's Kimberley in the hat." When we came back Gareth made Roamer a Fire Station so he could go in and out, and Mrs Jones ordered him a red jacket.

When our mat was finished we covered it with sticky-back plastic so it wouldn't get damaged when people use it. We have really enjoyed doing this work and we are all pleased with how it has turned out. The only thing we don't know is how long it will last when it is only made of paper. We are writing to the man who makes the car mats we have in school to find out how much it will cost to have our Roamer mat made. We are also making a Fire Engine game to play on our mat but you will have to wait until another time to hear about that.

Lots of love from,