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.

Waterproof? Yes or No

After a discussion about what waterproof means, teacher showed us various items and asked us to predict whether they were waterproof or not. After we had made our predictions, we got a chance to check whether our predictions were correct or not. We tested rubber gloves, socks, paper bags, plastic bags, wellies, raincoats and umbrellas.

Rain and rainmakers

We listened to a great piece that was made by people and sounded like rain.

It sounded exactly like rain.

You can listen to it here:

 We made our own rain sounds in class:

Next we had a look at rainmakers which sound like rain and people believe will help bring rain to places where rain is badly needed.

We made our own rainmakers out of bottles of seeds, rice, pasta and water.

We listened to the sounds each made and we found that

rice or seeds in a bottle make great rain sounds, but pasta or water do not.

We are lucky in Ireland that we have plenty of water for our crops, for swimming in, for drinking and for washing.  People in some other countries are not so lucky.

Investigating bridges

We read a really interesting book this morning.

It is called "The Three Billy Goat's Gruff".

In this story the goats have to cross a bridge to get to the really delicious grass.

We started talking all about bridges....what are they made from, why are they used, what shapes are in bridges, how can bridges be made really strong.

We did an experiment to see what kind of paper bridge is strongest.

 We tried just one sheet of paper.  It could hold only 2 or 3 bears.

 The sheet of paper was much stronger when we folded the sides.  This bridge could hold 6 bears.

 The bridge with an arch was a little stronger again and held 7 bears.

 The best bridge was one which had been folded like a fan.

 These are the bridges in order from the worst bridge to the best bridge.

We read a wonderful book about the different kinds of bridges: girder bridges, cantilever bridges, bridges with arches, suspension bridges and bridges that can rise to let boats pass underneath.

 We went for a walk around our school to find a bridge.

We found a great arched railway bridge on the way to Ballyloughane beach.

We looked at the arched railway bridge and we could see semicircular arches and signs that were rectangular, circular, rectangular and triangular.

 We particularly enjoyed standing in the tunnel made by the arched bridge listening the echoes we made with our voices.
We can't wait to begin designing our own bridges next week.