Bending Light

Bending Light
Monday, 7th April, 2008
We got a bottle, painted half of it black, put a hole in it and stuck a straw out of the hole. We filled the bottle with water and put on the lid.

We noticed that when the lid was on the bottle, no water came out the straw but as soon as we took the top off the bottle, the water came spurting out. We shone a torch at the back of the bottle. We could see the light from the torch in the water that was bending into the container. Our experiment didn’t work very well. We think this is because the room was too bright. We will try again some darker day.

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Friday, 4th April, 2008

Our caterpillars arrived by post today. They are tiny. They are in a container with their food. There are 5 of them. We hope we will have 5 healthy butterflies in about 3 weeks. We are keeping them out of direct sunlight. They don't need food or water yet.

Wednesday, 30th April, 2008
Two of our caterpillars have cocoons around them. When all 4 are in cocoons we will transfer them to their butterfly garden.
Wednesday, 7th May, 2008
All our caterpillars are now in their cocoons so teacher transferred them to their new home - a butterfly pavillion. We wonder when the butterflies will emerge?
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Our butterflies are hatching out of their cocoons. When we came in this morning we had one butterfly. We called him "Snappy". When we came in from the yard another butterfly had emerged from his cocoon. We called him "flappy". Our other 2 butterflies are still in their cocoons. We will put flowers and a little water into the butterfly pavillion so that the butterflies have something to eat and drink.
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Flappy has died. We don't know why. Snappy is looking very strong so today we let him go. We hope he is happy in the bushes by our school.Thursday, 15th May,2008
One more butterfly came out today. We called him "Swoop". His wings look a little strange. We hope he's ok. We won't release him until his wings look stronger.
Friday, 16th May 2008. Swoop is looking a little stronger today so we let him free. Here is a picture of the kinds of foods butterflies like. They particularly like flowers, sugared water and soft fruits like oranges, melon and bananas.
Monday, 19th May, 2008
Our last butterfly "Happy" had hatched when we came to school this morning. It was a lovely sunny day and so we let Happy go before we went home. Now the only cocoon we have left is one that we have been minding since September. We don't really think it will ever hatch but we will mind it until the end of the year, just in case. Here is a picture of Happy enjoying his last meal in captivity.

Bugs and Insects

Bugs and Insects
Friday, 4th April, 2008
We had a great talk about bugs and insects. We found out that insects have only 6 legs. Now we know if a bug is an insect or not.

We decided to sort out our box of bugs. We put the insects in one group and the other bugs in the other group.

Then we sorted all our bugs according to colour…..

...whether they have wings or not…..
…..whether they eat grass or other insects/animals...
….whether they have one colour or more than one colour...

It was a very interesting activity.

A slug in our classroom

A Slug in the Classroom
Thursday, 3rd April, 2008
A slug came into our classroom. He was so interesting. We had a good look at him. We were talking about snails all day. We even made some racing snail art.

We think the slug felt left out so he paid us a visit.

Our Wormery

Wormery, Monday, 31st March, 2008

We set up a wormery in our class.

Our wormery is made up of layers of sand and soil.

There are lots and lots of worms in it.
Look at the worms teacher collected.

This is the patch of soil where teacher dug up the worms last Sunday. We hope to take good care of our worms, to feed them grass and to give them some water from time to time. We hope they are happy with us.

Friday, 2nd May, 2008
Teacher is going to release the worms back into her garden today. Look at the wormery. All the layers of soil and sand have been mixed up by the worms. They have made lots and lots of tunnels in the soil. They have been happy in our classroom.

Our potatoes are growing

The potato we planted on February 29th has started to grow. We water it about once a week and it started to sprout over the Easter holidays. Here is a picture of it on Easter Saturday (March 22nd). We can see that it has three shoots. Here is a picture of the three shoots (8cm, 6cm and 6cm) on Monday, March 31st.

By Friday April 4th, the shoots have grown to 19cm, 17cm and 15cm.

Thursay, 5th June, 2008
Our potatoes have three lovely white flowers. The stalks are about 100cm tall. We can't wait to harvest the potatoes on June 10th.

Friday, 6th June, 2008
Today we decided to harvest our potatoes. We needed weighing scales, a basin of clean water, a towel, plastic gloves and the potato plant. We looked to see how tall our plant is by comparing it with the tallest and the smallest child in our class. When the potato plant was pulled out of the ground we could see all the little potatoes growing out of the roots. We collected, washed, dried and weighed the potatoes. We harvested six, and together they weighed 2 and a half ounces. If we had left them in the soil longer we think they would have grown much bigger and heavier.

A Big Earthworm

A Big Earthworm, Wednesday, 12th March, 2008Look at the huge earthworm we found on the grass.
He moved very quickly, and had lots and lots of segments.
It hurts the worm to pick him up with your hands, but we had gloves so we could pick him up and move him to somewhere safer where no-one would stand on him.

Floating Cork

Floating Cork, Wednesday, 12th March, 2008 When we put a cork into a cup of water, the cork always tries to float over to the edge of the cup.
We tried this lots of times, but the cork floated to the edge of the cup each time.
Teacher filled the cup up to the top, and then added even more water.
The water bulged at the top of the glass (the bulge holds because of surface tension). Now the cork floats in the middle of the cup.

Sugar Cube Science

Sugar Cube Science, Keep the Damp Out, Thursday, 6th March, 2008
We poured water on a sponge. The sponge only soaked up water when it was already wet.We tried newspaper too. It soaked up a little water but not much.
We made a sugar cube tower and put it in water with green dye (for St. Patrick’s Day). All the sugar cubes sucked up the green water.

Next we made towers with one cube on the bottom, then another layer of something to test, then 2 more sugar cubes.
We tried sponge, paper towel, newspaper, tin foil, cardboard, card, cling film and plastic in between the cubes of each tower.

Our experiment didn’t work too well. We found that the sugar cubes dissolved faster than they could absorb the coloured water through any material but paper towels.

When the sugar cubes dissolved, the whole tower fell over and the cube on the top absorbed the coloured water as soon as it touched the water. It was very interesting and fun anyway.

Balloon Blowing

Balloon Blowing, Monday, 3rd March, 2008

This is an ordinary balloon that we can easily blow up.

If we put it inside a bottle it doesn’t blow up so easily. Why not?

When we put the balloon in the bottle there is air in the bottle already. We can’t blow up the balloon without moving the air that is in the bottle already, and there is nowhere else for this air to go. It is impossible to blow up the balloon.
If we cut the end off the bottle, now the air can be pushed out of the way and we can blow up the balloon.

Moebius Strip

Moebius Strip, Monday, 3rd March, 2008
Teacher folded over one piece of paper. This strip of paper had two faces but.....when we drew a line down the middle, the line went on both the inside and the outside. This means that the paper had only one face.

When teacher cut the paper in two along the coloured line, we ended up with still only one strip. How strange? Magic? no, science!