Bright Sparks 4 Kids

We are learning all about electricity.

We have got a new Bright Sparks 4 Kids kit in the school.

Today teacher showed us how to make circuits.

 Tomorrow we look forward to making them ourselves.

We made circuits that lit a bulb (using one and then two batteries).

We made circuits that made a buzzer sound or made a fan rotate (again using one and then two batteries).

We found that if we used two batteries instead of a single battery that the bulb lit brighter, that the motor turned faster and that the buzzer sounded higher.

We even inserted switches so we could turn the buzzer/light/motor on and off.

We are really good at figuring out how circuits work!

Working with electricity

We have been talking about electricity.

Yesterday we saw how to make a circuit.

Today we gave it a try for ourselves.

In groups of three, we were given a battery, a bulb and two wires and we had to get the bulb to light.

It was quite a challenge but when we worked together we could get the bulbs lighting.

Next teacher took away one wire and we had to light the bulb again, this time with just a bulb, a battery and only one wire.

We are good at this when we work together.

Tomorrow we will talk about electrical safety.

Learning about squids

Noirín from the Explorers programme came to visit us again.
We were so happy to see her.
We really enjoyed talking about sea creatures on our collage.

Next Noirín helped us learn all about squids.
Here are some of the things we learned:

Noirín was really happy with us and with all we have learned and she presented each of us with a certificate, and a cert for the class.

 We are very proud.
Thank you so much Dr. Noirín Burke!
Here is a very interesting video about sea creatures:

Engineers' visit

Yesterday we had visitors from Medtronic. Marcia and John were engineers.

They were so nice and the things we did with them were so interesting. 

They showed us a model of a heart and explained different things about  it. They make devices to keep the valves of the heart open. We held the device and saw how they were able to shrink it with cold ice from a can. 

We then made a cube using marshmallows and cocktail sticks. We tested then to see if they were strong, then we introduced triangles to see if they were stronger with this. It was so much fun!

Thank you John, Marcia and Medtronic!!

Forces and types of energy

 We learned all about forces today.

We could tell which forces were pushes, pulls or twists.

 We were also really good at sorting types of energy into light energy, heat energy, sound energy and movement energy.

Different kinds of shoes

We had a great game of pass the shoe (like pass the parcel)

When the music stopped we got a chance to describe the shoe.

We talked about the different kinds of shoes that people wear.

It was very interesting.

We were good at guessing who owns each of these shoes.