Drinks for a daffodil

We know that daffodils like to drink water.

We wondered what would happen if we gave them coloured water to drink.

The results were amazing!

Super seahorses

We made some great sea horses in art today.

We might use them as pencil tops or as cool bookmarks.

Bottles full of air

Teacher had two bottles that were exactly the same.  Both had a balloon in it and the balloons were exactly the same.  The strange thing was that one balloon was impossible to blow up while the other balloon was quite easy to blow.  We had lots of guesses as to why this might be so.

Each bottle looked empty but was full of air before the balloon was added.

What we didn't know (but soon guessed) is that one bottle had some holes in it so when we blew up the balloon the air in the bottle could escape out the holes and the balloon was easy to blow up.

The other bottle had no holes in it, so even though it looked empty it was full of air, and this air had nowhere to go when we tried to force more air into the bottle so this balloon was impossible to blow up.

We now know that even things that look empty are usually full of air!

Keeping tissue dry

We had a small cup with some tissue in it (held there by blue tack).

We also had a bowl of water.

When we turn the cup upside down in the bowl of water we all (bar 3 of us) expected the tissue to get wet.

We were amazed to see that the tissue stayed dry!

Are you wondering why?

You see, the cup is filled with air as well as the tissue and blue tack.

When we put the cup into the basin of water, the air doesn't let the water in so the tissue stays dry.

If you tilt the cup as you place it in the water, the water will push some of the air out of the cup, then the water will rush in and wet the tissue.

We like the way that the air can stop the tissue getting wet!

Writing words that begin with "w"

We are getting so good at writing.

Today we pracitsed writing big Ws and small ws.

We wrote as many words as we could think of that began with W or with Wh.

Some of us wrote lots of words!

Straw whistles and bug sprays

We are talking about air these days.

We can use straws to get air to vibrate.

Each straw has the top cut into a point.

We can squeeze the point of the straw between our lips and make the straw vibrate.

The longer the straw the lower the note and the shorter the straw the higher the note.

Next we used our straws to make bug sprays.

When you put a straw into water, the straw is filled with water and air.

At the top of the straw is air too.

If you blow the air at the top of the straw away, air and then water rush up the straw to take the place of the air that was blown away.

If you keep blowing then the water at the top of straw turns into water droplets and you have a spray.

This is how all sprays work.

We can show you how to do this at home.

Baby animals

We are learning all about animals and their babies.
Today we played a great game to reunite animals with their babies.
Each child got a card.
They had to ask a partner if the partner had the matching card.
If the two cards match then the pair could sit down.

If the cards didn't match then the partners had to switch cards and go and ask someone else.

It is a fun game and at the end all the baby animals were united with their parents.

Watching the band

We all went out to see Scoil Chaitríona Senior's marching band.

They looked wonderful and sounded terrific.

We really enjoyed this mini-parade today.

Hovercraft

We were talking about hovercrafts today, and how they float over the water on a cushion of air.

We made our own hovercrafts with old CDs, bottle tops, blue tack and balloons.

It was fun to see them glide over the floor.

Air hockey games work in just the same way.

Maths hands-on activities

We all played lots of maths games today.

We played number games:

 Star addition and dice addition games

 Count and Find game and Lucky Ducky numbers bigger than/less than game.

We played space and shape games:

 2D shapes and Make and Break colours and spatial awareness game.

And we played a game that focused on time (measures: seasons)

It was difficult to choose the game that we liked best.

They were all a lot of fun to play.