Our newest cocoon

Confused about the difference between moths and butterflies? cocoons, chrysalis and pupa?

Try out this site http://www.bugs.org/bugquiz/answers/butterfly_moth.shtml

Hope this helps.

Watering the daffodils in Junior infants

We know that all plants and flowers and bulbs need water to grow. Yesterday we gave our flowers a huge drink of water because we won't be in school to feed them for a long time.Teacher will pop in next week to give them more water ....

Spring bulbs in senior infants

We planted tulips and daffodils yesterday .We ll know when spring comes because up they ll pop!

Fingerprints and measuring in Senior infants

Forces: Pop Top and Make a Spray

New caterpillar in Senior infants

 Monday, December 19th, 2011

Teacher found a very green caterpillar outside on the frosty step.  She has rescued it, and we will look after it in school and give it nice leaves to eat and water to drink.  Hopefully it will turn into a healthy moth (or butterfly).

Forces with a hair dryer

Forces Experiments

Gravity and Air

Teacher had a hair dryer and some balls of different weights and sizes.

After chatting about what the balls were made of, and what the balls are filled with, we put the balls in order, starting with the heaviest and finishing with the lightest.

The bouncy rubber ball was heaviest, the ping pong ball was next and the polystyrene ball was the lightest.

Next, we watched what happens when we let go of a ball:- each one falls to the ground because gravity is acting on it.

We took out the hairdryer, and guessed first what would happen if we put each ball into the slipstream and let the force (air) act on it.

We got so good at this that we could even manage to balance two balls in the slipstream.

A rubber bouncy ball does not float at all!

A little polystyrene ball will float up in the air stream, but is not heavy enough, or have a strong enough gravitational force to stay in the slipstream.  It just bounces away, every time.

So, what happens if we use a cardboard cylinder (a toilet roll or a kitchen roll) to make sure all the air travels upwards and not to the side.

The ping pong ball is pushed up much higher.

Sense of smell in Junior infants

Experimenting with sound

Different notes according to the size of the elastic band!

Playing our straw whistles.

Look what happens when a sound vibrates.  It makes the air around it vibrate.  Then when these vibrations hit the ear, our brains turn the vibrations into noise, and that is what we hear.
In space, where there is no air, it is very quiet.  That is because there is no air to vibrare near the sound, and so the vibrations don't reach the astronauts' ears, so no sound is heard.

Learning about skeletons in Senior infants

Testing for acids in Senior infants

WE TESTED DIFFERENT LIQUIDS AND BREAD SODA TO SEE IF THEY WERE ACIDIC OR NOT. 
WE BOILED RED CABBAGE AND ADDED A SMALL AMOUNT OF ORANGE JUICE, APPLE JUICE, MILK, VINEGAR, BREAD SODA AND WATER TO THE CABBAGE JUICE.

 WE FOUND OUT THAT APPLE JUICE, ORANGE JUICE AND VINEGAR TURNED THE PURPLE CABBAGE JUICE PINK.

WE FOUND OUT THAT BREAD SODA AND MILK TURNED THE CABBAGE JUICE BLUE OR A CLOUDY COLOUR.
WE KNOW WE MUST BRUSH OUR TEETH IF WE DRINK ACIDIC DRINK LIKE ORANGE JUICE AND APPLE JUICE!

Visit from Guzzler

Learning about our senses in Junior Infants

Today we learned all about the sense of hearing.  

Everyone in our classes can use their ears to hear but we know that every one in the world does not have the sense of hearing.   

We talked about all the ways we use our hearing; learning to talk, learnig in school, talking with friends and family, crossing the road, listening to music and the television.  

We tried using just the sense of hearing today.  This is what we heard when we concentrated hard on listening; 

Footsteps

A car

A truck

Wind

The teacher in the classroom next to us talking

The whiteboard.

  

The we played a game using just our heaing to identify different actions.  

Here are the ones we identified; 

             A tamberine 

             Shaking water in a bottle                    

             A book being closed with a bang   

             Teacher typing on the keys of the laptop

             Sharpening a pencil ( this was the hardest of all because we had to listen very carefully)

                      

Making Butter in senior infants

We made butter!We put cream in a flask and shook the flask.We shook and shook and shook.....and shook(for ten minutes!).... and finally the cream turned into yummy butter!!

It was worth all the hard work when we tasted it!

Planting cress seeds in Senior infants

Prisms in Senior infants

We looked at prisms on a sunny day.The light was split into all the colours of the rainbow!

Saving Energy

Junior engineers in Senior Infants

Monday, 5th December 2011.

We have been trying to make a big domino run in the classroom.  It is great fun.  We are particularly enjoying designing it so the run is quite long.  Watch out for a great video on this when we make a really great one.

Growing bulbs in Senior infants

We sowed some Hyacinth bulbs in our classroom. We sowed some of the bulbs in a pot of clay. We put one bulb in a glass of water. We sowed two more bulbs outside in our outdoor garden.

We will watch and see which bulbs grow the fastest and we will find out the reason why.

Our sense of sight: Junior infants