Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Rain, rain go away: Junior Infants

We learned that some materials are very good at keeping out the rain.  Umbrellas are a great way to keep the rain out. 
Clap, clap your hands 
very loud,
Stamp, stamp your feet 
on the ground.
Hum high, hum low
Next a great big blow!

Listen, listen
To the rain.
Softly, softly
Down it came. 

Absorption in Junior infants

We learned about things made of wood and metal.  We also looked at materials that soaked up water.  We did an experiment to find objects that soaked up water.
We made these fantastic patterns using food dye and tissue paper.  We folded the tissue into triangles and dipped the very tip of the tissue in the dye and watch how the tissue paper quickly soaked up the liquid. 


Science week with Ms. Conneely's Junior infants

We were learning all about magnets last week.

We were talking about the materials that are used to make the things we use every day; chairs, tables, lunch boxes, toys...  We discovered lots of different  materials; wood, plastic and metal.  It was very easy to find the metal things because it is hard, cold, shiny, strong and our magnets would stick to it. 

We also discovered that magnets are fussy things. They will not stick to just anything.  In a magnet north repels north, south repels south, but north and south attract each other. In our experiment that meant that the two blue sides would not stick together no matter how hard we tried and the two red sides would not stick together but the blue and the red attracted each other and stuck together very quickly.  In discovering this we learned that we could push and pull things using magnets or even make our magnets spin around in circles.



We tested lots of different things to see if they were magnetic.  We recorded the things that were on our worksheet. 


We placed the magnets in such a way that they repel each other and in so doing appear to be floating.  We thought this was like MAGIC!!

Bird Watching in 2nd Class

On Monday, Tom the birdwatcher came to our class.  He did lots of activities with us.  We made origami birds, drew birds and learnt about birds from around the world and in Ireland.  We had a very enjoyable afternoon and hope that when the weather gets better, Tom will be able to bring us out bird watching. 








Thursday, November 24, 2011

Science week with Bubble Magic

Last week was science week and we have been doing lots of science investigations and experiments. On Monday a man came to our school to teach us all about bubbles. He showed us some really cool things and we really enjoyed watching and learning from him.

He began by blowing small bubbles and then he made larger ones. He told us that in order to make a larger bubble you just need a bigger opening on your bubble wand. First he used what looked like a horn to blow big bubbles and then he used a really big round wand to make huge bubbles. This wand was so big that he couldn't blow it, instead he waved it through the air and the air in the room created the bubble for him!



He also showed us some really cool tricks like bouncing a bubble on bubble liquid, filling a bubble with smoke and even putting his hand inside a bubble without bursting it!!!


We learned that we can keep a bubble in the air by gently waving our hands underneath it to push the air up and we can see the seven colours of the rainbow on a bubble but that these colours change to a golden glow just before the bubble pops. We really enjoyed learning all about bubbles!




Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Fizzy rockets in Senior Infants
















We did a rocket experiment with Vitamin c tablets recently.We added water to full tablets,half tablets,and sometimes two or three tablets ,put the lid on and then counted down to blast off! It was exciting.Sometimes it took ten seconds.Sometimes it only took two.