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Science
Garden survey - Ms Regans class
The boys and girls of Ms Regan's class performed a survey of the flowers in our school garden. They identified each flower from a worksheet and tried to estimate how many of each they could see. They also had a look at another part of the grounds and learned that some flowers are wild flowers daisy, dandelion, and some are planted by gardeners e.g. Tulips, daffodils. |
Science week fun
Ms Bennets pupils had lots of fun during science week. They experimented with mixing materials to make gloup!     |
4th class - Materials and Forces- Egg Drop Challenge
4th class - Materials and Forces- Egg Drop Challenge As part of engineers week 4th class designed and tested a contraption to protect an egg from cracking or breaking during a fall. The boys and girls were given the challenge to design a system that would protect the egg in the event of a fall. The challenge was broke down into two possible solutions – slow down the fall of the egg and protect it in the event of a fall. The children split into small groups and discussed ways of accomplishing both of these using inspiration from what we could see from our environment.
After this discussion the pupils went back to their groups and planned their own design. There were a variety of approaches taken which all proved to be effective after a few tweaks. Some of the groups using sawdust and packing peanuts needed to use more. One of the groups using a parachute needed to properly restrain the egg as it fell out of the cradle when it landed and this fall caused it to break. After a little further tweaking the groups were ready for the engineer week expo and everyone succeeded in saving their eggs!!   |
3rd / 2nd class - Bridge Building
The boys and girls in Ms Moriaritys 2nd and 3rd class and Ms Dunnes 3rd class recently explored the area of bridge building. They boys and girls were shown a simple piece of paper spanning 2 piles of books and a weight was placed into the centre. The performance of the paper was discussed and the boys and girls were challenged to design a bridge using paper that would work better. They started by discussing the properties of the paper and identifying the properties that were suitable for the task and the properties that we would need to try and change. (paper is too flexible) The boys and girls tried out a number of techniques including the following
The nest results were found by placing the rulers under the paper. The pupils had great fun. They also used maths by weighing the amount of blocks etc to place onto the bridge. |
Dissecting Lillies - Mr Breslins 5th class
Mr Breslins 5th class learned about plants in the autumn. They studied a diagram of a flower in their textbook.  We decided to dissect a number of flowers and try and identify each part of the flower for ourselves. Using Lillies the boys and girls worked together to strip back the petals and identify the Sigma, Style and Ovary of each flower. Using a cotton bud they also got a chance to collect pollen from each flower. It surprised some members of the class how fine the grains of pollen were. We also visited the school garden to try and find flowers we could also dissect. We were able to find a number of flowers that had seeds forming in the ovary. Finally while in the garden we also went searching for examples of seeds that were visible on the trees and in flowers.    collected pollen |
Growing Conditions for plants - Ms Screeneys 5th class
Ms Screeney's 5th class learned about plants before Christmas. One of the two activities they undertook was to investigate the ideal conditions for cress to grow. They made predictions based on previous knowledge. The pupils suggested that plants need light, water and heat to grow. They were then asked to predict if any one of these were more important than the others. They designed the following test. Cotton wool was place in 8 containers. Cress seeds were sprinkled in each of these. The containers were then subjected to the following conditions: 1 - Light & heat & water 2 - Light & heat & NO water 3 - light & cold & water 4 - light & cold & NO water 5 - dark and heat and water 6 - dark and heat and NO water 7 - dark and cold and water 8 - dark and cold and NO water Each container was observed over a number of days and the results recorded. Results The container that had light, heat and water proved unsurprisingly to be the best conditions for the cress to grow. The most noteworthy aspect of the results show that in all cases where there was no water used, there was absolutely no growth.    |
Sense - smell and taste
Living things – sense of taste and smell – 2nd class investigated the relationship between smell and taste when it comes to food. Do we get all of the flavour of our food from our taste buds or does our sense of smell play a part. After a very interesting discussion where the children made predictions about whether a sense of smell was important or not we decided to do the following test. Holding their nose and closing their eyes the pupils tasted apple juice and orange juice to determine if they could tell them apart. They were then allowed try them without holding their nose to determine what difference they could tell. We also tried grapefruit juice to determine was it possible to tell this apart. Teacher told us that as this was more sour than the others it should be possible to register a difference on our tongues and most of us found that it was. After the test everyone agreed that our smell was very important to help full appreciate the different flavours.   |
2nd/3rd class electrical investigations
The boys and girls of the combined 2nd / 3rd class learned about electrical circuits recently. They carried our some investigations about what way to connect each component and made predictions about what may happen.           |
Junior Infants investigations
The boys and girls of Junior infants have been very busy thinking about what materials bath toys are made from. They decided to do some scientific investigations. This is their report.          |
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