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.

Papier Mache Houses

We are talking a lot about houses this month in class. We made papier mache houses out of flour, newspaper and milk cartons. When the cartons were dry we painted them to look like cottages. We have made a lovely village of cottages. We also made lovely clay castles,

and printed homes.

Lions and Prisoners behind bars

A lion/prisoner behind bars
Thursday, 8th January 2009
Teacher printed out pictures of empty cages, lions and prisoners.

We each cut out a cage and then stuck either a lion or a prisoner on the back. We can put the lion/prisoner behind bars by spinning the cage very quickly. This confuses our eyes into thinking that the lion/prisoner is actually behind bars and not on the other side of the page.

The Oily Water Bottle

The Oily Water Bottle,

Wednesday, 7th January, 2009
We have a bottle with oil, water and some blue colouring in it.

We can rock the bottle and see the blue water making waves in the oil. We shook the bottle and let it stand on teacher’s desk for a while. After a while we could see that the oil and water were separating again. That is because oil and water never mix.

Diving Drops

Diving Drops and Sinking Feelings
Wednesday, 7th January, 2009
We poured some water into a cup. Next we added oil. We had to guess whether the oil would mix with the water, or whether the oil would lie on top or on the bottom of the water. The oil stays on top of the water.

Next we added syrup and had to guess where the syrup would stay. It fell to the bottom of the cup, under the layer of water. Lastly we dropped a few drops of red food dye into the cup. The drops sat on the top of the oil for a while (except for the biggest drop). Then they all rested between the oil and the water and finally the drops mixed in with the water giving a nice red colour to the water.