As part of our topic work this term, Dove class have been designing, constructing and testing an ancient system the Egyptians used to retrieve water from the Nile. The ‘shaduf’ was simple lever mechanism that allowed buckets of water to be lifted and then tipped straight onto the fields next to the river with minimal man-power. The children experimented with placing the fulcrum at different points along the lever arm, deciding on the most effective position, and then had a ‘bucket’ of laughs soaking each other during their testing!