We were investigating high and low sounds today. Teacher showed us how to make straws into whistles by snipping the tops with a scissors.
She gave some of us short whistles, and some of us got long whistles. We discovered that the short whistles made high sounds, while the long whistles made low sounds. 
Teacher then showed us a sliding whistle that she has. We would all have liked to play the whistle, but that would not be too hygenic, so teacher showed us how it works. Just like the straws, when the whistle is short it makes a high sound, but when you slide the whistle to make it longer, the whistle sound is lower. Next we broke up into groups and were given a strong plastic container and 5 elastic bands of different colours and sizes. 
Teacher put the elastic bands in order from shortest to longest, then put them, still in order, on to the plastic container. She plucked each one in turn and we tried to sing the note that it made. We noticed that the shortest elastic bands made the highest sounds, and that the longest elastic bands made the lowest sounds. We had our own turn then at arranging the elastics according to size, and putting them on the plastic containers. 
We tried strumming the elastic bands, and singing the notes it made. In three different ways we found that short instruments (elastic bands, whistles and straws) make high sounds and that long instruments make lower sounds. We even used our maths skills by sorting from long to short to shortest and from short to longer and longest.
We sorted too from low to higher to highest, and from high to lower to lowest. We really understand long, longer, longest, short, shorter, shortest and high, higher, highest, low, lower, lowest now.
We tried this but found that the oil ended up on top of the water, regardless of which order they were put in the cup. Next teacher dropped a few drops of red food colouring on top of the oil. It sat on the oil for a while, then the drops fell down on top of the water and stayed there for a while. Eventually they sank to the bottom where the red colour mixed with the water, in the layer under the oil. 
Our next investigation was whether we could make a lava lamp from the oil, food colouing and water that we had. We found that by dropping a fizzy tablet into the oil and water mix, that we could make a great lava lamp. 
The fizzy tablet dissolved in the coloured water, and the bubbles of gas rose through the layer of oil, taking bubbles of red gas through the oil. This looked very like the lava lamps that you buy, but it lasts only as long as the tablets are dissolving to give off fizz. We didn't need electricity for our lava lamp, as you would with the lamps that you buy. Our next investigation was to test syrup to see whether it is lighter or heavier than oil or water. We got a cup, poured in water and oil, (the oil sat on the top) and then poured in syrup. 
The syrup sank to the bottom of the cup. We are now pretty sure that oil is the lightest, syrup the heaviest, and water is in the middle. We lined up our liquids from lightest to heaviest, and then from heaviest to lightest. 
Our last investigation was to check are the liquids in fact in the right order. We weighed all three to see which is lightest, and which is heaviest. We used a balancing scale to weigh 3 cups of liquid, all with the same amount of liquid in each (we used a ruler to be sure there was the same amount of liquid in each cup) and we found that: oil is lighter than water, 
oil is lighter than syrup 
and water is lighter than syrup. 
This means that oil is the lightest and syrup the heaviest, exactly what we expected having mixed all three in a cup. How interesting!
Have a look at our school yard, our ash trees and our school garden, all under a layer of snow.
We went outside to play in the snow - it was fun, but very cold. We wore our coats, hats and gloves. 
We could make it snow by shaking the ash trees.
