Our rocket morning

We had a wonderful rocket morning.

We set up our room yesterday.  Everyone was responsible for a table on which there was a space item.  We each had to talk about this item with our parents, visitors and other visiting classes.

Our parents came to see, other classes came to see and our principal Mrs. Coleman came to see.

At different intervals throughout the morning teacher rang the bell, the visiting children sat on the floor and the visiting adults moved to the sides of the room for various demonstrations.

We had demonstrations on:

how to launch straw rockets

how to launch elastic foam rockets

how to launch a stomp rocket

how to launch the snowman rocket

how to make a volcano

how craters are formed and how dinosaurs died

how to launch a fizzy rocket 

how gravity causes objects to fall

how to launch balloon rockets

The last part of our rocket morning involved launching the big air and water rockets in the yard outside.  The whole school came to see this.  It was soooooo exciting!

We lost our two water rockets.  After several goes both rocket landed on the roof.  Mike our long suffering caretaker has already rescued one and will rescue the other one some time when he gets a longer ladder!

What a wonderful morning.

Well done to all in Ms. McLoughlin's, Ms. Coade's and Ms. Geraghty's classes for the wonderful rocket morning!

Exploring materials using the digital microscope

We have a digital microscope in our class.

We can connect it up to the laptop and then connect this to the whiteboard.

Today we looked at our clothes and our bodies under the microscope.

This is what we saw:

We were very surprised at what materials look like under the microscope.

We used a large magnifying glass which was interesting too but not as detailed as the microscope.
We also played "Pass the Parcel" but with a difference:-
As we opened each layer we talked about the material that covered the parcel
Was it hard or soft, waterproof or absorbent, transparent or opaque and was it smooth or rough.
When we unwrapped a layer we could keep the prize and we had to describe the shape we found beside our prize.  What was the name of the shape?  How many corners and sides did it have? Could the shape roll or not?

Slideshows of our rocket morning/open day

Fizzy rockets in Ms. O'Connor's class

Fizzy Rocket Experiment!

Countdown 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1.....lift off!!

Open day invitation tomorrow

Fizzy rockets

We know that real rockets use fuel to blast off to space.

We used fizzy tablets with water to create our own rocket fuel.

We filled the canister one third full of water, added a fizzy tablet and counted backwards from 10.

The rocket explosions were so thrilling!

Have a look for yourself:

Ops, didn't manage to capture it on video this time!

Balloon rockets

Teacher had some rocket shaped balloons.

We tried to fly them straight to teacher, but found this impossible.

We found a cool way of flying balloon rockets in a straight line.

We used some string which we passed through a drinking straw as a line for the rocket to follow.

We taped the balloon to the straw, then.......10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 BLAST OFF!

Here's what happened:

Launching rockets

We went outside to a nearby field to test our rockets today.

We began by firing our elastic foam rockets, before moving on to the bigger water rockets:

and the air rockets which we made by ourselves and launched with teacher's rocket launcher.

A volcanic eruption

We would not like to go to Venus because it is so hot and smelly there.

This is because there are lots of volcanoes on venus.

(We are impressed that Volcanoes on Venus can be made with Vinegar!)

Here is what you need to make your own volcano:- 

You need: a bottle, vinegar and bread soda.

For the deluxe model you also need newspapers so that the volcano looks like a mountain, wash up liquid for the bubbles and red food colour to make the lava red.

Pour some bread soda, some food dye and some wash up liquid into your bottle and just add vinegar.

Have a look at what happens next.

Teacher told us that when vinegar and bread soda mix there is a chemical reaction that makes a gas.
This gas is Carbon Dioxide which is the same gas that we breathe out.
We thought we could use this gas to blow up a balloon.
We tried this (we were a little afraid that the balloon would burst but teacher explained that when the reaction is finished no more gas would be made and the balloon would stop getting bigger).  

We were so impressed with our volcano making and our balloon blowing that we are going to try this at home!

Making craters & how dinosaurs became extinct

When we were finding out about planets we discovered that there are lots of craters on Mercury, on the moon and on some of the other planets.

This is because asteroids and meteoroids sometimes hit the planets (especially the ones with no atmosphere like Mercury).

We tried making craters ourselves.  We were wondering do large asteroids make large craters and smaller asteroids make smaller craters?  We decided to test this.

We dropped different sized balls (asteroids) from the same heights and then looked at the craters they made.

We were right...smaller asteroids make smaller craters and bigger asteroids make bigger craters!

So, what has this got to do with dinosaurs?

Teacher told us the very sad story about how the dinosaurs all became extinct.

The dinosaurs were happily living on earth (as you can see), until the earth was hit by a large meteoroid or asteroid.  This fell to earth and landed, making a huge crater (and probably landing on some poor dinosaurs who died).  The rest of the dinosaurs were ok until the dust from the meteor rose into the air (killed some more dinosaurs) and blocked out the sun.  The earth became very cold and the poor dinosaurs died of the cold or of starvation because there was nothing to eat under all the ice!

This story actually is a true story!

Some wonderful space films

Have a look at some of the wonderful movies on space (and all other science and geography topics) that we have been watching in class.

Click on the picture to begin: