Elastic rockets

Teacher made an elastic rocket.  If you would like to make one just follow the wonderful directions here:

http://www.primaryscience.ie/media/flash/act29/index.html

We were trying to see if the rocket  would fly further if we pull the elastic band tighter. 

It does work like this, but unfortunately the elastic band broke before we finished all our trials.  We will try more tomorrow!

Rockets we made

Our own rockets

Clay, marbling and paint

More space games

Invitation

Rocket art

Planets data chart

Junior achievement

Balloon Rockets

Straw rockets

Volcanoes on Venus

Fizzy Rockets

Craters and dinosaurs

By the way, are you wondering what the difference between asteroids and meteorites and meteors is?

Teacher found this on the internet:

ASTEROID - A large chunk of stony or metallic material lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
METEOROID - A smaller chunk of stony or metallic material that's usually been broken off an asteroid
METEOR - The flash of light seen when a meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere
METEORITE - A meteor that has impacted Earth's surface.

Phonic flowers

Rockets and Astronauts

 

 We have written a song on our rockets.  We coloured and cut out the rocket songs and stuck them on to a giant rocket.  They look great.

We also drew in our faces and coloured and cut out astronauts.  We are a class full of astronauts.

Learning about shapes

Look at the website we used to help us learn about shapes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o38ausKjKKs

http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/online/longshape3d.html

http://www.literactive.com/Download/live.asp?swf=story_files/sequence_game_US.swf

Using Chopsticks

We have been learning a lot about China. 

We saw the flag, we talked about the Great Wall of China, about pandas, about schools, food and clothes in China.

 Today teacher brought some chopsticks for us to try, and some marshmallows to pick up with our chopsticks.  It was really difficult to pick up the marshmallow with our chopsticks.  Some of us were very good at it.  We would love to try eating a meal with chopsticks!

Hurling

 We are learning lots of hurling skills, and we played a great game of hockey today.

 

Welcome to Maite

Maite is a student from the Basque country in Spain.  She has come to our class to help us out with all our work and to learn lots of English (and some Irish) from us.

We think her English is really really good already!

We hope she enjoys being with us until Christmas, and that she really enjoys her stay in Ireland.

Launching air rockets

We even had a rocket race to see which rockets flew the farthest.

Well done to Lauren, Laura and Evan who aimed the rocket launchers to fly the farthest.

Hard luck to teacher (for Ireland) who was narrowly beaten by Maite (for the glory of Spain!)

Space PE

We are combining our monthly theme of "space" with our PE.

We played two wonderful space games today.

Our first game was called Earth and Moon and is played like "Ships Decks and Lifeboats".

We had to use our rockets to take off from the moon or Earth, we had to be astronauts on the Earth, in space and on the moon, we had to greet aliens, avoid asteroids and be in the right place at the right time every time.

The next game we played was Volcanoes on Venus and Craters on the moon.  The boys had the volcanoes and the girls had the craters.  Each group had to turn over as many of the other teams markers as they could.  This games is rather like saucers and domes which we have played before.

We love these space games. 

To improve our games skills we practised dribbling the bouncy balls.  We tried dribbling with our writing hands, with our other hand and with both. We are good, but there is still room for improvement.

Happy Halloween

What a wonderful end to a fantastic day!
Well done to all.

Flower words

Learning about reflectors

We learned all about reflectors today.

We also talked about using reflectors to keep us safe on the roads in the dark.

We know all about cats' eyes on the roads too.

We also talked about mirrors and about how they reflect light so well.

After watching a fun play doh movie about mirrors we tried pretending that we were mirrors.  Some of us are very good at this.

By the way, if you are free on Saturday 27th of October next (1-3pm) come to Oranmore pitch and be counted wearing a high vis vest. (Reflector vest).  If lots of people come and join in this, this will become a new record in the Guinness Book of Records!  BE SAFE, BE SEEN!

Halloween PE games

 We played a great game of "What Time is it Mrs. Witch/Mr.Wizard".

It is like "What Time is it Mr. Wolf?" but it feels more like a Halloween game.

When the time is called we have to jump the right number of jumps, and when the witch/wizard calls "dinner time" we have to run back to the start before we are caught.

  We also played mines.  When Katie called a colour we all had to gather at that colour before she counted to 5.  When Katie called "pumpkin" we all had to gather at a cone before Katie counted to 5.  Anyone not at a colour or a pumpkin before the number 5 was out for one go.  We really like these Halloween games.

Junior Achievement

2D Shapes

Dancing Raisins

Taking care of our teeth experiments

We want to check how good or bad certain drinks are for our teeth.

We put a small amount of eggshell (because it is made like a tooth) into each container and added orange juice, vinegar, blackcurrent juice, water,7up or lemon.  We will leave these for a few days and see what happens to the eggshells.  We think that water will be the best for our teeth, and that 7up or vinegar will be the worst because we know these are acids.  We kept this test fair by using the same size eggshell in each cup, and the same amount of liquid in each cup.  All we have to do now is to wait and see!

Next we tried another experiment.  We want to see what exactly toothpaste does.  Teacher half filled 2 small bottles with vinegar and put a stick of chalk in each. Into one container she also put a squirt of toothpaste.  Then she stretched a balloon over each bottle.  We had hoped to see the orange balloon fill with gas because the vinegar reacts with the chalk to give off a gas (Carbon Dioxide).  We thought the green balloon would not blow up because the toothpaste stops the vinegar reacting so well with the chalk.  In actual fact neither balloon blew up, but we will leave this experiment another day or two to see does the reaction happen slowly.