Fingerprints, hand prints and heights

We are talking about how each person in our class is special.

We all look very different from each other and every single one of us has unique fingerprints.

Each one of us is getting taller than we used to be.

Teacher measured each one of us, and now we can see our heights marked on the wall.

We all made handprints with paint in our books, and then teacher showed us how to take our fingerprints.

First of all we scribbled with a pencil on a little piece of paper.

Next we rubbed a finger in this scribble, until the finger turned black.

Then we stuck this finger down on a piece of sticky tape.

When we lifted our finger we were able to see our fingerprint, and we could stick this into our book with the sticky tape.

Last of all we examined our fingerprints with magnifying glasses.

Seeing a sneeze

We have been talking about our bodies.

Today we were talking about our lungs, and about how sneezes can spread germs.

Teacher showed us a model of our lungs, made from a plastic bottle (ribs), a yellow balloon (lung), and a purple balloon (diaphram).  When you push the diaphram in and squeeze the ribs, the air in the lung is pushed out of our bodies, but when you pull the diaphram and let the ribs expand the air rushes in to fill your lung.

We were really looking forward to seeing a sneeze in action.

For this we needed a big balloon.

Teacher put some cornflour into the balloon, then blew up the balloon.

We burst the balloon with a pin, and the cornflour went EVERYWHERE!!!

This is what happens when we sneeze without covering our mouth.
From now on we are going to sneeze into our elbows so as not to spread germs.
We will also be careful about washing our hands when we go to the toilet or pick our noses!

Autumn walk and bug hunt

Since the weather was so nice we went on an Autumnal nature walk and bug hunt.

We looked at some of the leaves that are falling off the trees in our school ground.

We found Sycamore, Ash and Horse Chestnut leaves.

We did some leaf rubbings with these.

We also went bug hunting at the back of the Senior school.  After talking about which bugs are insects (those with 6 legs) and those which are not, we looked under logs, in the grass, on the dry ground and in the trees for as many different kinds of mini beasts as we could find.

We really enjoyed looking at so many different kinds of little creatures.

Planting daffodils

It is a good time to plant daffodils.

Each of us dug a hole in the soil and placed the daffodil bulb in the hole with the roots facing downwards.

We can't wait to see our daffodils flowering next Spring.

After washing our hands, we even had time to catch up on our story reading while others got their turn to plant.

Recording weather in September

We have been keeping a record of the weather each day. 

 We record the type of day it is, what the temperature is at 1pm (often in the sun) and the amount of rain that fell during the school day.

We mark the calendar each day.

Today we made a pictogram of the data collected in September, and we plotted temperatures (though this wasn't as accurate because we forgot to record it some days)

Visit from an electrician

One of the dads in our class is an Electrician.

Tony came to our class today to tell us all about his job.

With his wonderful assistant he was able to show us his tools and tell us lots of things about electricity.

Tony showed us how magnets work, and he told us how electricity can be made making magnets (he even brought us in an electromagnet to see).  

He showed us wires and pliers, and explained how electricity comes to our houses from the electrical generating stations.

Tony works with science every day in his job.

He taught us how to stay safe around electricity.

We really enjoyed Tony's talk today.
Thank you so much for such a wonderful presentation.

Launching rockets

We made air rockets this morning.

We were surprised to see that a rectangular card can turn into a cylinder,

and that a circular piece of card can turn into a cone.

Our rockets are made from a cylinder, a cone on the top and triangles for the fins.

Teacher had a big launcher so we could try launching the rockets.

Our best rocket flew 38 strides (we measured this with our feet).

We discovered that the rockets that started by pointing up, flew quite high but not very far.

The rockets that flew the furthest were the ones that pointed out at an angle.

We also saw a push rocket, a stomp rocket and a water rocket in action.

Pumping enough air into the rockets to make them fly well is hard work!

Amazing caterpillar

Look at the amazing caterpillar found in the school ground.

Fabulous!

Teacher looked it up on the computer and thinks it might be a 

Smerinthus ocellata  Eyed Hawk-Moth

Using our rockets to measure distances

We flew our foam rockets again today.

Today we measured how far they could fly.

Teachers rocket flew 4 meter sticks away, one flew 3 meters and our champion one flew 6 meters!

We placed meter sticks side by side to determine how far each rocket flew.

Gardening in school

Autumn gardening with Kay

Testing our anemometer again

We tried using our anemometer again.

This time teacher made an improvement to the anemometer.

Now the cups and cardboard swing on a pen cap on a nail.  This works so much better than our last model.

Working in a hospital

We had a wonderful visit from a health care assistant working in the dialysis unit of our local hospital.

Helena explained all about how our kidneys work, how kidneys filter out toxins from our body and keep us very healthy.  We learned about how important it is for us to drink lots of water each day, and not to drink too many fizzy drinks. We learned how important it is for us to go to the toilet when we need to go, and how our urine (our wee) looks darker in the mornings when all the toxins are being flushed out of our bodies.

Helena showed us where are kidneys are in our bodies (but we couldn't feel them because our rib cages are protecting them).

 Helena showed us some of the instruments that doctors and nurses in the hospitals use. She also told us all about her uniform (which she has to leave in the hospital so it can stay extra clean).

 We also learned what happens when kidneys don't work too well. Helena works with patients whose kidneys don't work well at all.  These patients need to have kidney dialysis three times every week.  They need to spend about 4 hours hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine.  This machine filters out the toxins from their blood and keeps their blood clean from toxins.

We heard about how doctors and nurses are very nice and how a visit to a hospital can make us better. Helena works in the hospital and uses science every day in her work.
We really enjoyed Helena's visit.
Thank you so much for telling us all about your job in the hospital!

Under the microscope

We have a lovely computer microscope in our class.

Yesterday teacher found a dead Speckled Wood butterfly in her house.

Today we looked at this butterfly's wings under the microscope.

It was really interesting.

Then we had a look at some other materials under the microscope

 Runners

 Hair

 A school T shirt

 A school track suit

We also looked at skin patterns and hair patterns.

We loved examining things under the microscope!