Magnets Discovery Afternoon

We learned all about magnets today.

We discovered what magnets are attracted to and what magnets are not attracted to, we found several objects that magnets will work through, and some that magnets can't work through, we made our own magnets and an electromagnet, we talked about magnets which can attract or repel other magnets and we played with dowel magnets, iron filings and lots of different sorts of magnets.

We learned most things about the magnets by discovering for ourselves!

Click on the photo below to see the photos of our magnet exploration afternoon:

Musical Touch

We can use our bodies to conduct electricity.

 We can make music when we make a circuit to allow the electricity travels through our bodies.

Sneezes and Germs

We were learning about sneezes and germs today.

We know that we should use the inside of our elbows if we feel a sneeze or a cough coming.

We know that a sneeze can travel as fast as a car on the motorway.

We watched some great Tigtag videos on this and we tried it out with a balloon and pretend germs (glitter and cornflour).

What a mess!

We will try to catch our sneezes in future!

Push and pull toys

We made a Santa toy today.

It is a toy that uses forces (push and pull) to work.

We can make Santa go up and down the chimney by pushing and pulling the skewer.

Bee Wise

We had a marvelous visit from Robin Barry, an environmental scientist today.

Click on this picture to see more photos

We learned lots about habitats, ecosystems, the food chain, and especially about bees.

We were especially impressed at the very interesting samples of bees, honey, eggs, butterflies and bugs that Robin let us look at.

What an interesting talk!

We will try and look after our environment to the best of our abilities!

A frosty winter walk

There are lots of interesting things to see in nature in Winter.

We really enjoyed our walk on such a nice frosty morning.

How strong is air?

We know that air is all around us but we were wondering if air is very strong?

We tested this by using a bottle and a ping pong ball.

If you fill a bottle with water and then put a ping pong ball on top instead of a cap, what do you think will happen if you turn both up-side down.

Will the ping pong ball fall, causing all the water to splash all over the place?

OR

Will the ping pong ball stay where it is and act as a stopper, keeping all the water in the bottle?

Surprisingly this is exactly what happens.

Why?

The water in the bottle wants to fall to earth (gravity is pulling the water) but the air under the ping pong ball pushes it up against the bottle keeping all the water in the bottle.

UNBELIEVABLE!

Try this yourself at home and be amazed!

Passenger boats

Today we made passenger boats.

We used marla.

A ball of marla just sinks every time but still teacher asked us to try and make a floating boat from a sphere of marla.

We saw how big heavy shells can float if they are the right shape.

We designed boats using a similar shape.

When we could get our boats floating, we loaded them with passengers to see how many passengers each boat could take before it sank.