Sunday, April 24, 2011

Cabbage White Butterflies (at last)

Remember our caterpillars from last September?
Well, guess what has happened to them?

Today teacher and her own kids went to school to water the school gardens.  They took a look at our butterfly garden, and to their amazement and delight, two of the cocoons have opened, and there were two beautiful white butterflies flying around.  They took the butterflies home, took lots of photos, then released the butterflies into the wild (they wouldn't survive a week in the net, they need to be free in this lovely weather!)

Shadows in Junior Infants


We have been learning about shadows and reflections this week.Look at the photos of us in the yard making crazy shadow shapes.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Update on cress seeds in Senior infants

A few weeks ago we planted some cress seeds in class. Have a look at how they've grown!! We will be bringing them home tomorrow and we can use them in salads.

Floating and sinking in Senior Infants

This week we have been busy investigating things that float and things that sink. We are becoming good at predicting accurately what will happen (will it be a floater or a sinker?) before we try it out. When we tried to push an inflated balloon under the water it wouldn't stay under the water when we let it go again. This push force is called upthrust and this is what helps to make objects float. The inflated ballooon floated because the upthrust from the water was stronger than the weight of the balloon. Some of the objects we tested (like the stone and the metal spoon) sank straight away as the weight of them was stronger than the upthrust of the water. It's fun investigating and we could do it outside as the weather was lovely.




Monday, April 11, 2011

Planting magic beans in Junior Infants


Today we planted our "magic" runner beans in pots. I read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk first. We will keep them inside till they start to sprout, then we will transfer them to our raised bed. The kids thought they looked like chocolate beans!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Raised bed in Junior infants

We planted vegetables in our raised bed on Friday. We planted, lettuce. beetroot, spinach ,  radishes and onions ,all from seed. We look forward to their  growth.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Potato planting in Junior infants


We planted the the potatoes we had sitting in the egg box on the warm window sill . The eyes had grown. We planted them in a large bag in front of our class.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Dissolving and evaporating in Junior Infants

We conducted an experiment on dissolving and evaporating using salt, sugar, flour and cocoa powder, We had a guessing game first and then tried them out. We also put salt in water on a lid and left it overnight on the warm window sill. We had salt crystals the next day. We checked the  jars the next day to see if anything had changed..