Tom Cuffe's birds

Tom came to visit us today in class.

It was such an interesting morning.

We were shown some cool origami (paper folding) birds and animals.

We heard all about different birds (the biggest, tallest, longest wingspan, smallest egg, smallest bird, fastest diver, best at hovering etc.).  We learned lots about different Irish and non Irish birds.

We learned some bird songs and we even went outside bird watching.

Tom showed us an easy way to draw a bird.

Our drawings are fantastic!

A talking bottle: What happens when air is heated?

We can get a bottle to talk to us:

Here's the trick:

Fill a bottle with very cold water.  Put the (wet) lid upside down on the bottle.

Then get someone with really warm hands to hold the bottle.

The lid will pop up and down as if talking to us.

Why does this happen?

The cold air in the bottle heats up when you put warm hands beside it.

Warm air takes more space and rises, pushing the top off the bottle.

Some of this air escapes and the lid falls down again, but as you heat up more of the air in the bottle, the lid continues to pop up and down.

This is a really fun investigation.

The un-burstable balloon

What happens when you put a pin in a balloon?

IT BURSTS!

Not always.

We have a trick that allows us to put a pin in a balloon and still have the un-burstable balloon.

How does this work?

When a pin normally goes into a balloon, the rubber next to the pin pulls away and the balloon bursts.

We put strips of sticky tape on the balloon and then we stuck the pin into the balloon just where the tape was.

The rubber under the tape couldn't pull away so the balloon didn't burst, and in fact we could push the pin in and out of the balloon where it acted like a stopper.  When the pin was taken out a little air could escape through the hole, but when the pin was pushed back in the air stayed in the balloon.

AMAZING!

Our new class garden

Kay came to help us with our new class garden.

We have a box of our own.

We planted it with flowers, vegetables and fruits.

We will water and weed our garden.

We can't wait to see our plants grow.

Signs of Spring

We are noticing signs of spring all around us.

Today we had to choose our favourite sign of spring.

We made a data chart of this and had fun comparing the different things.

Daffodil drinks

We know that daffodils like to drink water.

We wondered what would happen if we gave them coloured water to drink.

The results were amazing!

Bottles of air

Teacher had two bottles that were exactly the same.  Both had a balloon in it and the balloons were exactly the same.  The strange thing was that one balloon was impossible to blow up while the other balloon was quite easy to blow.  We had lots of guesses as to why this might be so.

Each bottle looked empty but was full of air before the balloon was added.

What we didn't know (but soon guessed) is that one bottle had some holes in it so when we blew up the balloon the air in the bottle could escape out the holes and the balloon was easy to blow up.

The other bottle had no holes in it, so even though it looked empty it was full of air, and this air had nowhere to go when we tried to force more air into the bottle so this balloon was impossible to blow up.

We now know that even things that look empty are usually full of air!

Keeping tissues dry

We had a small cup with some tissue in it (held there by blue tack).

We also had a bowl of water.

When we turn the cup upside down in the bowl of water we all (bar 3 of us) expected the tissue to get wet.

We were amazed to see that the tissue stayed dry!

Are you wondering why?

You see, the cup is filled with air as well as the tissue and blue tack.

When we put the cup into the basin of water, the air doesn't let the water in so the tissue stays dry.

If you tilt the cup as you place it in the water, the water will push some of the air out of the cup, then the water will rush in and wet the tissue.

We like the way that the air can stop the tissue getting wet!

Straw whistles and bug sprays

We are talking about air these days.

We can use straws to get air to vibrate.

Each straw has the top cut into a point.

We can squeeze the point of the straw between our lips and make the straw vibrate.

The longer the straw the lower the note and the shorter the straw the higher the note.

Next we used our straws to make bug sprays.

When you put a straw into water, the straw is filled with water and air.

At the top of the straw is air too.

If you blow the air at the top of the straw away, air and then water rush up the straw to take the place of the air that was blown away.

If you keep blowing then the water at the top of straw turns into water droplets and you have a spray.

This is how all sprays work.

We can show you how to do this at home.

Baby animals

We are learning all about animals and their babies.
Today we played a great game to reunite animals with their babies.
Each child got a card.
They had to ask a partner if the partner had the matching card.
If the two cards match then the pair could sit down.

If the cards didn't match then the partners had to switch cards and go and ask someone else.

It is a fun game and at the end all the baby animals were united with their parents.

Hovercraft

We were talking about hovercrafts today, and how they float over the water on a cushion of air.

We made our own hovercrafts with old CDs, bottle tops, blue tack and balloons.

It was fun to see them glide over the floor.

Air hockey games work in just the same way.