St Brigid Crosses and Paintings

This week we made some lovely St Brigid's Crosses

We also did some lovely paintings of St Brgid and her cloak.

Wonderful Wigwams

Wednesday, 28th January, 2009

We have been talking about houses, and also the letter Ww. Today we talked all about wigwams and their shape, then we drew some wigwams in crayon on black paper, and we used felt, rafia and wool to make wonderful weird wigwams!

Looking out for Birds

Monday, 26th January, 2009
Ms. Crotty class have hung 2 bird feeders off the trees beside our infant yard.We are keeping an eye on the feeders to see if we can see any interesting birds. They come to eat the nuts and seeds that we put out in winter. When the weather is very cold, the ground gets very hard and the birds can't eat the delicious worms that they like to eat during the warmer weather.

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
We are very good at balancing.
We are able to balance on our toes, on one leg, on our bottoms, on two hands and two feet, on one leg with a partner, toes to toes, back to back, on two hands and two knees, on our tummies, on one hand, one knee and one toe.
Here are some photos of our balancing.

Making a Lighthouse

Lighthouses
Thursday, 22nd January, 2009
We made a circuit with two wires, a bulb and a battery. We made a circuit with only one wire, a bulb and a battery. Look at our circuits lighting.

We are proud of our lighthouses. Look at the lighthouses we made in class.

Hovercraft

Hovercraft
Wednesday, 21st January, 2009
We can make a hovercraft from a balloon, a lid of a drinks bottle, an old CD and some strong glue. We blow up the balloon and attach it to the closed lid. Our hovercraft doesn’t move until we open the lid of the bottle. Then the air goes from the balloon through the lid and under the CD. This makes the CD glide along over the floor.
We now have a hovercraft.

A Visit From "Educate Me" about Space

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

We had a great talk about Space.

We saw lots of pictures and displays.

We learned all about the planets in our galaxy.We saw a picture of the moon, and a model rocket and lander made to scale.We saw a picture of the earth from space, samples of spacesuits and space food, samples from space shuttles and pictures of the planets.

We heard a great talk all about our solar system.

We know all the planets in our solar system. They are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

We even got to hold models of the planets as we heard all about each one.

We really enjoyed the talk about space, and we learned lots of things we didn't already know. Maybe some of us might be astronauts when we're bigger.

Testing Insulators

Friday, January 16th, 2009
Testing Insulators.

Teacher brought lots of ice to school today so we decided to test which materials we have at school would keep the ice coldest for longest.

We found padded fabric, newspaper, plastic, tinfoil and a piece of carpet. We wanted to keep the test fair so teacher cut the materials into squares of exactly the same size. We put an ice cube on to the middle of each piece of material. All the icecubes were exactly the same size and shape.

We wrapped the ice cubes in the pieces of material, and tied them with an elastic band.We left the test for about 45 minutes (we would like to have left the test for longer but it was very near home time so we couldn't) then opened up the materials and compared the sizes of the icecubes. Here are our results:

The smallest piece of ice was in the plastic, most of that ice cube had turned to water (melted).Next smallest was the ice cube in the newspaper.Third smallest was the ice in the tinfoil, where we also could see some water.The largest ice cubes were the ones wrapped in padded fabric, and in carpet so we think these materials make the best insulators.We would like to repeat this test some day when we have more time, and can wait until the ice cubes fully melt.

Science Open Day

Science Open Day
Friday, 16th January, 2009
Senior Infants, Room 5 had our Science Open Day this morning from 9 to 10:15am. It was very exciting. The pupils were each responsible for one investigation, and had to explain to parents, other teachers and to other classes what exactly they were doing at their table. All rose to the occasion and we really showed everyone what great scientists we are in this class.
The investigations we demonstrated were:
A balloon in a bottle, Making a spray, Tissue goal, Floating ball, Racing colours, Squeeky straw, Balloon lung, Magical glass, Acids, Diving Drops, Oily water bottle, Ice and water vapour, Snake spiral, Rainbow spinner, The (almost) unburstable balloon, Finger Prints, Dancing raisins, Volcano, Potato maze, Caged lion/prisoner, Rising ball, Helicopters, Balloon rocket and Fizzy rocket

Make a Diver

Make a Diver
Friday, 9th January 2009
Teacher made a diver out of marla, and connected him to a pen cap with a paper clip and an elastic band.
First of all we tried to get a marla diver to float without any air tank. It doesn’t. Marla sinks when it is in a ball.
We tried to get the diver to sink and then float again. We did this by shaking the bottle up and down, side to side, forwards and backwards. We tried tapping the diver too. The diver stayed floating.
We tried turning the bottle upside down and back again. The diver sank but wouldn’t float again. The same happened when we rolled the bottle.We discovered that 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.
We made our own divers. Teacher tried them out in a big cup before putting them in a big bottle. They worked really well.