Making windmills

Tuesday, 29th September, 2009
We made windmills today. They look great - they were easy to decorate but quite hard to make. Thanks to Maggie for all her help. We tried to get them to move in the wind outside but they didn't twist too fast. Maybe we need windier weather!

Greenwave Photographic Award

Monday, 28th September, 2009
We are thrilled to have a won the 2009 Greenwave Photograph Award for 2009 for our picture of frogs and frogspawn. Today we were pleased and honoured to have Éanna Ní Lamhna from Greenwave, Oonagh Meeghan from Discover Science and Engineering, and Andrew the photographer, all the way from Dublin to present us with our prize. We won a tripod, a camera case, and a video camera which we will use to take lots of video footage of our science work, and other exciting events in our school. Both Oonagh and Éanna talked to us about science and being scientists. They were so interesting. Well done to all the students and teachers who watch the buds, birds and frogs in spring and who take part in the Greenwave programme each year.

Flying Helicopters

Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Now that it is Autumn we are noticing lots of falling leaves, and also some conkers, sycamore keys (helicopters) and ash keys (helicopters). We wondered why the seeds are called helicopters? First of all we tried flying them. They fluttered a little, but didn't look like helicopters until we separated each helicopter from the others. Then the single seed twisted and flew in the air just like a real helicopter.
We discussed lots of different things that fly, then looked up a book about flying to see did we forget anything.
Next we made our own helicopters. Teacher had the template, and before we each had our own helicopter we talked about all the shapes we could see in the template. There was one strange shape, but we found 5 rectangles in the helicopter, 4 small ones made out of one bigger rectangle. We know that rectangles have 4 sides, 2 bigger than the other 2. Next we tried flying our helicopters in the classroom. We found that our helicopters fly much better when they are a bit heavier, so we put paper clips on the helicopters and flew them again. Much better! We figured out how to change the direction that the helicopters spin in. We can do this by folding the blades of the helicopter the opposite way to the way we had them folded at the start. Lastly we took our helicopters outside to see how they fly outside. They flew much further and much faster when the wind helped to fly them.Friday, September 25th, 2009
Teacher brought in more helicopters. One works when the balloon is blown up. The helicopter blades spin and the helicopter rises to the ceiling. Very exciting! The other one is a hand flown helicopter. We all had a turn at this one. It spins when you set it off by rubbing your hands together with the helicopter between them. It was hard to get it flying, but we were able after a few turns each!

Planting Strawberries

Ms. McLoughlin has some strawberry plants at home. Each strawberry plant has lots of little runners (plants) which will turn into strawberry plants next year. She brought lots of the little runners into school and we planted them into our own containers. Each of us has a container. They have names on them. We put some compost into the container and then made a hole in the compost. The little strawberry plants were put into the hole in the compost, then covered with a little more compost. Next we needed to water the plants. We decided to use recycled rain water to water the strawberries. This means that we are saving water by not using water from the taps. Because we are a green school we are careful not to waste any water that we don't need. Lastly we washed our hands to keep ourselves clean and healthy. We can't wait to have a feast of strawberries next June!

Litter Picking

Wednesday, 23rd September
We like to keep our school grounds clean.
We have been awarded our second Green Flag and are very proud of our litter-free school. Today we all went out litter picking. We found lots and lots of rubbish near our classroom. We were very careful to use gloves and litter pickers to pick up the rubbish (and we washed our hands well afterwards). We collected lots of papers, plastic bottles and lots of sweet wrappers. We will be careful not to throw litter ourselves.

A Scientist in our class

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

We have been talking about jobs that adults do. We know that a lot of them have jobs that can help us.Today one of our mums came to school to talk to us about being a biomaterials scientist. Norahella works in a biomedical company that designs, makes and tests devices that can be put into the top of peoples tummies to help with reflux problems. It is a very important job that helps lots of sick people. In Norahella's company there is a test dummy on which to practise inserting the device. The scientists in her company wear white coats and goggles in case their eyes or clothes get splashed while doing lots of experiments. Being a scientist sounds great. To be scientists we have to keep our eyes and ears open, to ask lots of questions about the world around us and to try some interesting experiments and investigations. Thanks to Norahella for her really interesting talk. We all want to be scientists when we grow up!

Horse Chestnut

One of the girls in our class found a horse chestnut tree over the weekend. She brought us in leaves, conkers and the chestnuts from the outside of the conkers. We counted the leaflets on the big leaf. Each leaf has 7 pieces. They look like fingers on a hand. The chestnuts are green and spikey while the conkers inside are a lovely colour brown. We also have some nice autumn sycamore leaves in our class, along with their helicopter-like seeds. We know these seeds are spread by the wind.

My Lungs

Friday, September 18th, 2009

We were talking about our bodies, our skeletons, our muscles, our hearts and our lungs. We practised taking deep breaths using our noses to breathe in and our mouths to breathe out. We tried to imagine our lungs inside our rib cages. We made a model lung using two bottles and a balloon. When we squeeze the bottle (our rib cages), the air is pushed out of the balloon (our lungs), and when we let go of the bottle the air rushes in again filling the balloon (lung) again. We all had a turn trying this. Next we used a 2litre bottle full of water, a basin, some piping and a straw each to see how much air can fit in our lungs. Most of us could empty about half of the bottle, but teacher could empty it all. Does she have bigger lungs because she is bigger, or does she just talk too much?

Watching the Weather

We put out our weather stick every morning, then before we go home we record the temperature and amount of rain that fell when we were at school. It is interesting to see how hot or how cold the day is, and how wet it is. In our classroom we also keep a record of whether each day is cloudy, cold, sunny, snowy, wet or windy. This record is kept on our calendar for all to see. Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Today we looked at the weather chart for September. We made a data chart of the weather record. We looked at the days that were sunny, cloudy, windy, wet, snowy and cold. We counted how many of each kind of day there was, and we compared the number of each kind of day. From this data we decided that September was a nice month - mostly cloudy or sunny days.

Art mirroring science

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Sarah brought us in some wonderful autumn leaves today. We love their colours - red, yellow, green, red and black. Mercy brought in some brown ones yesterday. We based our art on these autumn leaves. We made an autumn tree by painting the trunk and using a collage of crepe paper for the leaves. We also made some nice leaf rubbings using the side of crayons. We could really see the veins of each leaf when we rubbed over them with our crayons.