A hen and chicks in school

Ms. McGrath brought us a hen and lots of gorgeous fluffy black and yellow chicks from her farm today.

It was so exciting to see them in school.
We loved the way the mother hen pushed all her little chicks under her wings when she was worried about them.  What a lovely mum!

Floating boats

We had a great time talking about boats today.
We have already looked at things that float and things that sink.
The big shell surprised us; it was big and heavy but it floated fine.
Teacher gave us each a sphere of marla.
We found that it sinks.
Now we tried making this marla into a floating boat.
It was quite a challenge, but we did it in the end!

Next we competed to see how many passengers each boat could safely hold.
We recorded and then compared results.
Our best boat could safely hold 28 passengers!
When every pair had a turn we lined up the boats according to the most passengers each could hold.
The most interesting discussion of all was the one in which we tried to find out why some boats won't float at all.
We decided that it is best to have a boat with a thin bottom, high sides and  no holes.
When we fixed the sinking green boat so that it became a boat with a thin bottom, high sides and no holes it floated very well.
Now that we are such expert boat makers we each made a boat out of clay.
We know that these will not float (because the clay absorbs water) we went about making our favourite kinds of boats.....submarines, boats to hold snowmen, boats with sails, cruise ships etc.
We are really interested in boats now!

Our caterpillars are growing

Last week our caterpillars were exactly like the caterpillars in the song:

There's a tiny caterpillar on a leaf, wiggle, wiggle

There's a tiny caterpillar on a leaf, wiggle, wiggle

There's a tiny caterpillar, a tiny caterpillar

There's a tiny caterpillar on a leaf, wiggle, wiggle

This week they are like the second verse:

There's a big fat caterpillar on a leaf, munch, munch

There's a big fat caterpillar on a leaf, munch, munch

There's a big fat caterpillar, a big fat caterpillar

There's a big fat caterpillar on a leaf, munch, munch

Mopping up spills

We were reading a great story called Billy's bucket.

We saw the water in Billy's bucket being spilled (along with sea creatures).

We were wondering what we could use to mop up spills if any water was spilled in our class.

First of all we called out all the materials that we thought would be good for mopping up spills.

Teacher had samples of each.

We put these in order, from the one that we thought would be best at mopping spills to the one that would be the worst.

Teacher was wondering how we could check which was the best.

We noticed that there was a dry circle in the middle of all the water.  We think that the material that gives the biggest dry circle will be the material that mops up most of the spill, so this will be the best material for mopping spills.

Here's what we discovered:

We were a little worried about not having a truly fair test.

To have a fair test we decided that it would be best to cut each material into the same size.

We didn't want to do this (because it is a school towel) so instead we just looked at each material under the microscope which was very interesting.

Now we know that sponges and towels are best for mopping spills.

Thanks science!

Floating and sinking

Which objects can float? Which sink?

Why are floating objects so useful? (arm bands, safety jackets, life buoys, buoys in the sea, boats)

Why do we need to use some objects that sink? (anchors)

Today we had some investigative time finding out what objects around us float and what sink.

First of all we guessed.

Which of these objects do you think will float and which will sink....................?

a bottle full of water, a boat, a lollipop, a pencil, a sponge, an apple, a spoon, a shell, a key, a stone, a plastic duck, a straw, a wooden block, a metal block, toy animals.

We all guessed (yes, even teacher) and we all got some guesses right and some wrong, (which is ok because a guess is just a guess and doesn't have to be right!)

One thing we noticed is that when an object sinks to the bottom it looks like there are two of it in the water.  Teacher explained that this is due to refraction of light - light bends when it goes through water so we see one object from the top and one from the side of the container.  This gives the illusion of there being two identical objects in the container.

Some of us find this a bit hard so we are just interested to see it in action even if this science is something we will learn more about when we are bigger.

For now we are really enjoying guessing and testing lots of objects to see whether they float or sink.

We can even guess why?  (hint, objects with air in them float and objects that have no air in them at all usually sink).

But what about apples and sponges?

These were a bit of a surprise.

Try floating them and see what we learned!

Our caterpillars have arrived

What an exciting day.....
Our "painted lady" caterpillars just arrived by post.

We don't need to feed them, they will eat the fawn gunk at the bottom of their container.

Look at how tiny they are now.

We will regularly show you how they are growing and how they look as butterflies.

We will look after them so well and release them when they are ready to fly away and start their own families.

Coats

On Tuesday it was very wet and windy, on Wednesday it was warm and sunny and today it was showery.  We took a look at the different kinds of jackets we need to wear in an Irish summer.

First of all we had a look at our jackets and we tried to figure out what they were made from.

We know that leather comes from animal skin,

silk comes from silkworms,

cotton is a plant that grows,

wool comes from sheep

and many materials (fabrics) are man made.

We chatted about the coats that animals have (fur, hair or feathers).  We know that some coats are waterproof and others keep out the wind or sun but not the rain.

Animals have coats that help them to blend in to their surroundings (camouflage).  We are glad that we don't blend into our surroundings because that wouldn't be as safe as wearing high viz or bright clothes, especially when we are on the path or crossing roads.
Now we started to wonder????????
Do all black coats have pockets?  In our class the answer was YES
Do people always wear summer jackets in summer?  In our class the answer was NO, some children brought a winter jacket to school today (even though it is now summer) and some children said they don't even have a summer jacket.
Do all pink coats have reflectors on them?  In our class the answer was NO
Do all purple coats have pockets?  YES our one purple coat did.
Do all jackets with fluff on the hood have a hood that is stuck to the coat?  NO, one of our jackets didn't.
Do all grey coats have reflectors?  NO, in fact neither did.
Do all jackets have the same colour on the inside and outside of the coat?  NO, some did, some didn't/
A new word for us today was the colour  NAVY.  We have been calling this colour grey or blue or black.  It is nice to have a proper word for this colour.
We enjoyed using Venn hoops for sorting our jackets and figuring out the answers to our questions.
Later this week we are going to design nice coats for our drawings.
The highlight of this very interesting lesson was getting to use the microscope to look at our jackets under the microscope.
We found that the soft fluffy jackets looked like cotton wool under the microscope.
The puffy looking jackets looked like bubble wrap and the waterproof jackets looked like the coverings we sometimes see on metal factory floors.

Here is a great story (Aesop's fable) about the Sun and the North Wind

More investigations with sound

Today we tried a few more sound investigations.
We know that big objects make low sounds while small objects make high sounds.
First of all we lined up spoons according to size.
Then we tried listening to them.  To do this we tied string around the spoons, then put the string up to the outside of our ears.
The sound of the spoon banging against something hard (like the leg of a chair) caused the vibrations to go through the spoon and into our ears.
Sure enough the small spoon make the sound of a high bell, while the large ladle made the sound of a very low church bell.

Teacher was wondering what happens when you drop a small stone into water.

We explained that the stone causes the water to vibrate and that we can see this as circular waves in the water.  We wondered if this happens only in circular containers, but some of us have noticed this in the sea and that's not a circular container, so we think it happens no matter where you drop the stone in water.

Teacher had a tuning fork in class.
She showed us how to use it, and how to get it to sing a note by causing the prongs to vibrate and then holding the other end to the table or to the bone under our ears.  We loved this.
We wondered what would happen if we put the vibrating tuning fork into water.
Boy did we get a surprise! (The vibrations caused the water to ripple in circles, the circles bumped into each other and the water droplets came jumping out of the container.

Next we tried pressing a vibrating tuning fork against a container of rice and a container of peas. 

It was fun to hear the buzz and see the rice and peas jump.

You should also try this with a ping pong ball on a string.  This really is fun.

When you touch the vibrating tuning fork off the ball the vibrations of the tuning fork cause the air inside the ball to vibrate, which in turn make the vibrations stronger which then makes the ball bounce around.

Next we spotted some string telephones.

These work when the sound waves travel through the (tight) string and into the cup.  The cup then amplifies (makes louder) the sound of our voices.

It was quite hard to keep the string tight and to make sure we didn't touch the string with our fingers or the sides of the cup.  These telephones are great for telling secrets!

We really are experts on sound and vibrations now!