Using shapes to make air rockets

Shapes are amazing.

Teacher showed us how we can roll a rectangle to make a cylinder,

how we can fold and chop a rectangle to make a square or diamond and triangles,

how we can roll a circle to make a cone.

Armed with this knowledge we set about making air rockets.

Teacher had made the cylinders for us, because that is a slow job, but we stuck on the triangular fins, and made and stuck on the nose cones.  We also decorated our rockets.  We will fly them outside when the weather improves a little.

Making and flying foam rockets

We made our own foam rockets.

These are so much fun.

We used insulation for pipes for the rocket cylinder and we used squares of card to make the triangular fins.  Teacher helped us with the duct tape so our rockets are really strong.

These rockets fly when we stretch the elastic backwards and then let go.

We had a knock out league in the corridor and Jakub was the class champion.  His rocket flies really well (so does Adam's), and went the furthest each time.

Investigating materials: Pass the Parcel

Hallowe'en is a great time to play traditional games like "pass the parcel".

We played this game today, with a slight twist.

We brought a bit of science and maths into our game.

With each layer of the parcel the students had to describe the material covering the parcel....what is the covering? is it hard/soft? is it absorbent/waterproof? is it opaque/see through? is it dull/shiny?

When the music stopped we could unwrap a layer, keep the prize and describe the maths shape we see......how many sides? how many corners? its colour? the name of the shape?

We really like this game, but we ran out of time.  Teacher has said that we can play this game again after the break!

Junior Achievement

We were delighted to have Yaneth come to visit us today.

Our story was all about gardening which was very suitable since we were gardening with Kay on Monday and were planting daffodil bulbs today.

 

Visit from Tom Cuffe the birdman

We had a visit from Tom Cuffe today.

He is an expert on birds and also on Origami (paper folding).

Today he showed us lots of wonderful pieces of origami, he told us all about birds (the biggest, smallest, longest wing span, smallest and largest eggs, fastest flyer, slowest birds etc).   We really enjoyed his presentation.

Tom also showed us how to draw a bird (we are really good at this) and he had a stuffed owl and a stuffed kestrel which we could look at and touch.

We know lots and lots about birds now.

Thank you so much Tom.

Autumn nature walk: Ms. Flaherty's class

We went on a nature walk and collected sycamore, horse-chestnut, oak, beech and ash leaves. We also collected conkers from the hose-chestnut tree and helicopters from the sycamore tree. Afterwards, we did some leaf rubbings. 

Our school garden in Autumn

We helped Kay in the garden today.

We had some autumn jobs to do.

We harvested beans from the beanstalks, we took out the stakes from the beanstalks and we will keep them safe until next Spring, we removed slugs and snails from our garden (and took them to the wall, away from our flowers and vegetables.

We really enjoyed our time in the garden and we are looking forward to planting our daffodil bulbs before the Hallowe'en break.

Making straw rockets

We are starting to talk about space.

Today we made our own straw rockets.

This is quite easy to do.

All you need is a half of an A4 sheet of paper, some sticky tape and a straw.  We also used some rocket tops to make our rockets look really cool.

 Can you figure out how we made them?

If not, click on this link for more information.

Ms. Caul's class and Ms. Coade's class visit the atlantaquaria