On Thursday I accompanied 20 year 5 children to Swanmore College where they took part in the Primary Engineering Project. The project is run by the college for its local feeder primary schools; 4 of which are taking part this year. The children worked in teams of 4 to design and make their own race car! They had to build everything from scratch, including the chassis and all the electronics to make the car move both forwards and backwards. The really exciting parts were making the body of the car on a special machine to form the plastic into the correct shape. They also designed and made their own stickers to decorate and personalise their cars. The whole afternoon was finished off with a series of races. The children all had a fantastic afternoon and have come back to school with their cars, which will be shared in assembly this Friday. One lucky team will also be taken through to the final where they will compete against all the other schools to hopfully be crownded winner. I have yet to decide who this lucky team will be…!
This half term Year 3 are learning all about light and shadows. We started off our unit this week by playing around with our shadows on the playground. This was easier said than done with the weather this week, but we were lucky enough to catch a few minutes of sunshine and had great fun investigating the different shapes we could make with our shadows. We were looking at how to change our shadows so that they were as small as possible, as long as possible, shaped like a ‘T’ or an ‘O’. We also had to work together to see if we could make a shape with three legs but only one head. We found out that it was very hard to lose our shadow too! Next week we will continue our learning by investigating the shadows cast by different materials. We can’t wait!
Year 4 began their new Science topic yesterday which focuses on light and shadows. They began by making shadow puppets and discussed why the shadows were made, coming to the conclusion that our hands are opaque so they block the light, causing a shadow. They then made multi-link monsters and used a torch to shine on their models to create a shadow. They investiagted what happened when they shone the torch at different angles and what happened when they moved the torch towards the monster and further away.
Hampshire Caterers HC3S were in school today to teach each class about healthy eating. Each session covered the ingredients of a balanced meal before finishing with example fruit kebabs and smoothies.
The day concluded with a live version of ‘Ready Steady Cook’ featuring some special guest stars. Watch the video below to find out more.
Year 4 began their new topic for science by investigating different types of rocks from all over the world.
Mrs Rye had bought in her extensive rock collection and gave the children a talk about where the rocks came from in the world and why they were special to her. The children then got to have a look at the collection as well as touch and hold them and whilst they were doing this, they wrote some key questions they wanted to find out about throughout the unit. Some of the children’s questions were “Why do some rocks look different on the outside then they do on the inside?” and “Why are some rocks smooth and other rocks hard?”
The children will be working hard to find out the answers to these questions over the next half term.
This afternoon, children in Year 3 carried out a Scientific investigation into the push and pull forces exerted by elastic bands. Using a band stretched between two chair legs, they carefully measured how far the band was pulled back, and then measured how far the band pushed a wooden block. They found out that the larger the ‘pull’ force, the larger the ‘push’ force and the further the block travelled.
Year Five began their first science unit of the year today by looking at the life cycle of plants. We looked a variety of pieces of fruit, and we used pencils and pastels to sketch what we saw. We will be using our observations and questions to guide us through the next few weeks.
Yesterday, Maple and Jackalberry class’ started their science topic of Plants. We recorded and discussed what we already knew about what plants need to grow strong and healthy and how we know that plants are living. We also played a game on the computer where we had to give the plant enough light, heat and water to grow to its full size in 4 weeks – we found this quite tricky! Finally, the most exciting part of our lesson – we got to plant our own flowers! We each had 1 viola which we planted in a pot using compost and we made sure we watered it too. Our job is to keep a diary over the next 5 weeks to record how well our flower is growing. We must record how we look after it and include pictures to show how it grows over the coming weeks. We will compare our diaries the week before half term to see how we have got on!
On Monday afternoon, Gingko class had a special treat for a sunny afternoon – we went pond dipping! Every day, we can see the pond from our classroom window and we have seen how it changes with the seasons. However, since we are currently learning about HABITATS during our Science lessons, we decided it was about time we explored this special habitat up close.
In small groups, the children took it in turns to collect observational and measured data (such as the size and depth of the pond and the water and air temperature), and to explore the surrounding grasses for plants and minibeasts. However, the favourite activity was definitely the pond dipping where strange water creatures and plants were collected, studied and identified. There was a lot of pond weed and algae to peer through but we caught lots of newt tadpoles, a water beetle, a pond snail and some kind of water spider too! Hovering over the pond, dragonflies and butterflies were spotted and skating across its surface were some very agile water boatmen!
In future lessons we will be thinking further about why these animals might like the pond as their home, and will be considering how their bodies are suited to their habitat.
In year 5 we have started our solar system project in science. We learned about the Earth, Sun and the Moon. The Sun is about 150,000,000 miles from the Earth. The Earth is about 250,000 miles from the Moon. The Sun is about 154,000,000 miles from the Moon.
The moon takes 27 days, 43 minutes and 11.6 seconds to go all the way around the Earth. The moon is 4.5 billion years old! It takes 130 days to get to the moon by car, 13 hours by rocket and 1.52 seconds by the speed of light.
The Sun is by far the largest body in the solar system. The Sun takes up 99.86% of the solar systems mass. The Suns core is around 13600000 degrees Celsius.
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old! The Earth is one of the 9 planets orbiting the Sun. No one really knows how our planet came into being, but one common theory is that the Earth developed form a swirling mass of rocks and gases.
This is just the start of our project and we will in form you if any thing exciting happens.
(Report by Amber, Ellen and Jamie B, BWJS Bloggers)
