Science with Eggs

It is Science Week. We did a few interesting experiments in science week. We found out that eggs sink in water, but if you add salt to the water, the egg can now float.

We know why this happens......We did another experiment that is almost the same.....Put some rice into a cup and then put a bouncy ball in the cup, and fill the cup with rice (covering the ball). Now if you shake the cup the bouncy ball will always come to the top. This is because the little rice pieces are so small that they always race to the bottom of the cup first, so the ball always ends up on top. (That's why crumbs are always at the bottom of a cornflakes box!) The eggs are the same. The salt in the water always pushes to the bottom (because it makes the water dense) so the egg ends up on top. Interesting isn't it?

We did another experiment to find out if eggs are raw or cooked. We made both eggs spin and then we tried to stop them spinning. The boiled egg is very well behaved, it stops when it is told. (It's like wearing a seatbelt in the car). The raw eggs stops spinning for a second, but spins again as soon as you take your hand away (like someone without a seatbelt in the car, keeps moving forward even if the car stops in a crash). You can spin an egg to see if it is cooked or not.

Acrobatic Clowns

We coloured some clowns and put coins on their hands. Without coins the clowns couldn't balance but when we put the coins on the clowns would balance anywhere..on our hands, on our noses and even on the top of a pencil!

Caring

We are talking a lot about caring. We talk about people who care for us and people we care for. Look at our lovely paintings of the people who care for us.

The Mobile Farm

The mobile farm came to visit our school today. We really enjoyed the visit. We got to see Rosie the Donkey, Jasmine the Duck, Cloe the Goose,Megan the black hen, Daisy the cow and her son Bob, Babe the Pig, Rodger the Rabbit and Dolly the Sheep.
We got to see and pet all the animals and some of us even had Jasmine the duck on our shoulders or our heads when she was out for her walk.

Rosie the Donkey showed us her very brown teeth. We can see why we need to brush our teeth every day, we don't want them turning brown like Rosie's.

3,2,1, Balloon Rockets

Today in our class we were talking about air. We tried to get a balloons to fly in a straight line. They never do. When you blow up a balloon and then let them go they fly in all directions.
We finally got a balloon to fly in a straight line by attaching the balloon to a string with a straw and some selotape. This time the balloon flew in a straight line. We even got the balloon to fly uphill and downhill by having one end of the string higher than the other.

Winter Trees

We went on a nature walk today to see trees in Winter. We saw evergreen and decidious trees. The decidious trees have lost their leaves now. The evergreen trees don't lose leaves in winter. We also saw black buds on the Ash tree and sticky brown buds on the Horse Chestnut tree.

Junior Achievement

Jarleth has come to talk to our class about Junior Achievement. He is a college student (studying computers and business) and he is helping us understand how important money and business is in all our lives. Today he read us a really nice story about the farm and gave us great magnets for our fridges.

Reading Acitivities

We are taking turns reading and matching words, playing twist and check phonics and keywords, playing look and find lotto and shopping list game.

Witches Walk

On Friday October 26th, we all dressed up for Halloween and we went on our Witches Walk around Renmore. When we got back from our walk we had a Halloween Party. Happy Halloween everyone.

Yesterday, we had a great day at Ballybane library. We walked to the library with Ms. Flaherty's class and with Ms. Geraghty's class. When we got there Clare Murphy told us wonderful stories. We really like visiting the library.

Circuits and Lighthouses

On October 24th, 2007, Room 4 and Room 5 got together for a session on Electricity. First of all we talked about the sun and the moon, and night and day.

After that we talked about staying safe with electricity (plugs, kites, wires etc.).
Next teacher gave every pair of students a bulb, a battery and two wires and we had to make a circuit to get the bulb lighting. That wasn't too hard, but then teacher took away one wire and we had to get the bulb lighting.

When we were good at this we made our own lighthouses out of kitchen rolls, bulbs, bulb holders, batteries, wires and yoghurt pots. We are very proud of our lighthouses

Halloween Art

We have been really busy making our classroom look as spooky as possible for Halloween. We have been reading spooky stories, singing scary songs, practising scary Irish and doing lots of artwork. We really like Halloween. We can't wait to dress up and go for our Witches Walk on Friday.

St. Brigit's Garden

We went on tour to St. Brigid's garden on Thursday, October 18th 2007. We had a fantastic day. We went there by bus and we were very careful to wear all our seatbelts.

When we got to the garden we were taken around by a very nice lady named Louise. She took us on a walk through the woods and then we did some bughunting with minibeasts. We were minibeast detectives. We listened to bird songs. A robin came to sit on the tree beside us and sing to us. We looked for nuts, mushrooms and berries. We collected nuts, seeds and berries. We even used instruments and went for a little parade. We learned so much about leaves, berries and seeds. It was great fun.

When we got back we examined our treasures and we put them in sets of leaves, nuts, mushrooms, berries, apples, seeds, feathers and flowers.