Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Calling all Minecraft fans

Are you into Minecraft? Yes? Well our very own Calum has put together some super (and helpful) YouTube videos explaining how he does in Minecraft. A big thank you and congrats to Calum for doing this, a pretty cool thing to be able to do, I think we'll all agree. Check them out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYb6pTezv9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnuIPx4VEpU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9B5eNV2K-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3DIV4ssynE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCDYsTdtSU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIfrP9WwpmM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDPpDqMncU





Magnets

Today we were learning all about magnets. We had two tasks to do. The first was to see how strong different magnets were, and we measured this by seeing how many paper clips we could hang from a magnet, which was taped to the end of a table. It was quite tricky to get them to stick together, and we needed steady hands! See if you can count how many we got to stick together.



 

 


Our second task was again about checking how strong magnets were, but this time we had to test them through different objects, like our desks and rulers, and see if they would stick pick up the paper clips. Some of the results were pretty cool!

http://youtu.be/OrKbikOdjYg

http://youtu.be/zcxA0hg4BAg

Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Visitors!

Yesterday we found a poor hedgehog tangled up in the nets in the field. Luckily we spotted him and were able to cut him out of the nets, and off he went on his merry way. We spotted a couple of other wildlife animals there too!


 

 

Thursday, 24 April 2014

Climate change

On Thursday, a man called Enda came in to teach us all about climate change and sing some songs to help us learn. We had a great time and learned a lot. Here he is singing a song about cows!
 

Easter eggs

For Easter we made our very own Easter eggs - from real eggs! Of course we just used the empty shells, and made sure that nothing was left inside the egg before we used them. Then we painted them in lots of colourful designs, and some familiar characters too! See if you can guess what they are......


 

 

 

Monday, 31 March 2014

Starch

31st March:

Today we did the final part of our work for the Discovery Science award. We were learning about starch and where you might find it. Starch is a carbohydrate and is found in plants, so it can be found in some foods, and also things like paper. Years ago people used to use starch to make the collars on shirts stand up nice and straight, but this usually led to lots of itchy necks!

Our job today was to test eight everyday things to see whether they contained starch. First of all we had to guess, or estimate, whether we thought they would contain starch, and record this on our log sheet. Then we got to test our ideas out. We used iodine, which makes things with starch in them turn a dark black colour when you drop it on them. It looks like black paint or ink from a pen. We used a syringe to suck up iodine from a jar and then drop it onto each item. Iodine can leave stains on clothes, so we had to be careful when handling it!


Check out some of our work - can you guess which items had starch in them?



 

Rhys was a great help with filling up the syringes with iodine
 
Biscuit

Bread


Flour
Potato

Apple


Paper/cardboard

Pasta

Sunday, 30 March 2014

Bull Island

On Thursday, we headed off to visit Bull Island as part of our Discovery Science work. Despite it's name, this is not an island with bulls on it, but a nature reserve with some extremely rare animals, insects and plants living on it.

Our host, Pat, gave us lots of information about the animals and the things that live there. He told us about eco systems and how important it is to keep the island going as a nature reserve. He had plenty of cool photos and interesting facts for us.

Next we had lunch and had a look at some of the animals on display in cases in the centre. There were plenty of crabs and sea creatures, as well as some pretty real-looking birds!

Finally it was time to head out and explore the island to see if we could see any of the wildlife that Pat had told us about. We saw Brent geese, which come all the way from Canada to Ireland for the winter, a heron, a falcon, a crab and plenty of other shells of sea creatures. We finished off the day with a run around on the beach. All in all we had a great day and certainly learned plenty.


Check out those claws!
 

Pat taught us lots about the wildlife on the island
 
 


Listening carefully to Pat
  
 

Fun at the beach!
 

Ryley and Isabelle found a crab