Our Carol Service

We had our carol service in the church on the evening of December 19th. It was a lovely ceremony and all the children sang and read so beautifully. Well done to all who came, all who dressed up and all who practised so hard for the last few weeks to make the ceremony so special.

Water Experiments

Wednesday, 19th December. Some easy water experiments to try at home:

Make a Diver
We made a diver out of marla, and connected him to a pen cap with a paper clip and an elastic band.
We can get the diver to sink by squeezing the bottle, and we can make him surface again by letting go.
This is because the diver floats when the pen cap is full of air but he sinks when the air in the cap is compressed (from the squeezing) and the cap fills with water. Water in the lid is too heavy to keep the diver floating.

Bath Tricks
Water will spill out of a bottle if you fill it with water, put your hand on top, turn it
upside down and then take your hand away.
Water will not spill out of the bottle if you fill it with water, put your hand on top, turn it upside down under the water and then take your hand away.
This is because the air pressure pushing down on the water in the basin is as strong as the water pressure in the bottle trying to get out, so the water in the bottle stays put.
We can get a card to stick on our bottle of water. When we turned the bottle with the card on it upside down and let go, the card didn’t fall off. Why not? Because the pressure of air
pushing up on the card was as strong as the water pressure in the bottle so the water couldn't get out and the card stays put. Water Walks Along a String

You can get water to spill sideways by pouring the water down along a string. The water holds tightly on to the string by surface tension and travels along the string instead of spilling straight down. Detergent Power

Our speed boat is floating on the water.
We can break the surface tension of the water by squirting in some wash up liquid. When we do this the boat will shoot forward. Water Races
Does water flow faster if you shake or squeeze the bottle?........
….No, it doesn’t, but if flows faster if you make a tornado in the bottle by swirling the bottle of water. Making a tornado is fun. You can make one by joining two bottles together with plumbers tape. Start the tornado by swirling the water in the top bottle.

Making Boats
Does marla float or sink? Both. If it is in a ball it will sink but you can make it into a boat shape and it will float.We made boats and then when they could float we filled them with peas (passengers)
Flat thin shapes with high sides seem to make the best boats.

The Extra Strong Balloon

Normally a balloon will burst if you prick it with a pin. We found a way to keep the balloon from bursting. If you put sticky tape on the balloon first, and then use the pin, the balloon doesn't burst at all, or it doesn't burst for a while. Our balloon didn't burst at first, but then it burst, giving us all a fright.

December art

We made Advent wreaths, Christmas Cribs and papier mache Santas this week. Christmas is coming very soon. We are practising the songs for the Carol service on December 19th too.

Look at our painted christmas trees, painted baubles, clay decorations, bread decorations, santa cards and fabric and fibre angels. We do lots of nice art at Christmas time.

Science Experiments in December

Check out the school's science page to see what work we did on dancing raisins and on acids and alkalis today.

Our School is Very Christmassy.

Look out for these Christmas things in our classroom or school: A christmas tree, a crib, an advent wreath, an advent calendar.

Book Fair

This is the week of our Book Fair. We have been to see all the books in the hall. There are some really nice ones. We can buy them if we like. The more books that are bought the more books the school receives for the class libraries. We love reading them.
Today, 4th December, all the Infant classes went to hear Claire, a story teller. She told us 4 wonderful stories, one about a pirate, a mermaid and a magician. The second one was about the hippos party. The third one was about the sultan, the mice and the cheese, and the last one was about Granny's hot chocolate. They were great fun and we joined in with all the sound effects.

Sinbad the Sailor Pantomime

We had a pantomime in our school today. We all went to see it. It was great fun. One of the children in our class got picked to be Captain Bird's Eye. He was terrific.

Human Number Line

We are practicing the words before and after. We are using the number line and deciding where numbers come on the line. We have a human numberline and we play a swapping game. For instance someone who has no number can swap with the person who has the number that comes before 8 etc.

Some Heat Experiments

We have been busy trying a few heat experiments. We have made spiral snakes. We coloured them and cut them out. We hung some over the radiator, beside the window, and we hung others in the middle of the room. Some of our snakes became disco dancing snakes but the others became sleepy snakes. Can you guess which were which?
That's right! The snakes over the heater move because hot air rises and move the snakes. The snakes in the middle of the room have no moving air under them so they stay still.

The next experiment we tried was holding a table tennis ball over a hair dryer. The rising hot air keeps the ball floating in the air. The experiment doesn't work with a heavy bouncy ball (too heavy for the air to lift) and with a light foam ball (too light to stay in the warm air flow so it gets knocked over very quickly).

The Planetarium in our school

The planetarium came to our school. We all sat inside it and we found out all about the sun, the stars and the planets. It was so interesting. We even made our own stars and planets in art time.In Maths we talked about what our favourite things in space are, and we made a chart. Have a look at how many of us liked the sun, the moon, planets and stars.

Meeting our President

On Thursday, November 15th Scoil Chaitríona Junior were invited to join in the 10 year celebrations of Science Week in Galway. Mrs. McAleese is the president of Ireland. She came too.

Senior Infants Room 5 went to represent our school. We met Mrs. McAleese and her husband. They are really nice. They shook our hands and chatted to us. We got to make wonderful wind turbines with Dick and Anne from Rude Mechanicals and we got a present of a lovely yellow Science Week T-shirt each. It was such a great occasion. Some of us were even on Friday's Irish Times newspaper. We were so tired after our exciting day.