Science week – Wednesday

 

Today we continued our science week and explored our sense of hearing.

With Miss Sudbury we did an experiment to see if we could hear a pin drop. After we heard the pin drop, we moved away from it to see if it would change how it sounded. We then recorded our results.

Once our experiment was done we talked about our hearing and thought about how some people can’t hear very well and what they may do you talk to people. We even practiced some language!

With Mrs Hogan we did a sound walk. We went outside in the sunshine and listened to the world around us. We heard lots of things including birds chirping, cars driving past and children playing. Then we went back inside and did a ‘guess the sound’ quiz – Some of them were tricky to guess!

With Miss Vincent we thought about how we hear. We talked about the types of sounds we hear and what sounds we liked and didn’t like – a lot of us really liked music! We even started to talk about soundwaves and how we hear because of vibrations that are sent to our eardrums.

Then we all had fun making string telephones – they actually worked – but only when you held the string tight so that the vibrations could travel. We all really enjoyed talking to our friends and investigating how they worked.

Science week -Tuesday

Today we find out  about our sense of smell and our sense of taste.

We talked about our tongues and looked at our tastebuds using a magnifying glass.

Then we tried testing different tastes – salt was salty and sugar was sweet. They looked the same and we talked about not eating things unless a sensible adult has told you it is safe. We also discussed too much sugar or salt is not healthy for you.

For a sour taste we tried eating a lemon. Some of us liked it but it made some of us pull a face!

Next we ate some bitter chocolate, it was quite strong and most of us liked it.

Finally we tried to trick our tastebuds – Miss Sudbury had made some purple sweets we tried to guess what flavour they were. Then we tasted them while we held our noses – we couldn’t taste them properly. It was only when we let go of our noses that we realised it was lemon flavour.

 

With Mrs Hogan we investigated our sense of smell.  There were lots of pots with different smells – mint, curry, strawberry, vanilla, marshmallow and fish.  It was very tricky!

 

We also tried a quiz guessing which nose belonged to which animal. They all look very different.

 

 

 

Science week – Monday

This week we are having a Science week.

We are talking about our senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.

We talked about our sense of sight and how blind people do things.  Oakley told us all about somebody he knows who has a guide dog to help him get around.  We tried wearing blindfolds and leading a partner around the class and past some obstacles – it was quite tricky.

Miss Vincent had got some special glasses from her university to show us what different types of sight loss would look like.

Then we tried using our sense of touch to work out what objects Miss Morton had hidden in some socks.  It was interesting to talk to our partner describe what we thought they were.

With Mrs Hogan we made pictures using puffy paint so we could feel them with our fingers as well as use our eyes.  It was a mix of flour, salt and water which we painted on then microwaved to puff it up.  You can find the recipe here.

Exmoor Zoo

 

We had an amazing visit from Exmoor Zoo today.

We have been talking about different classes of animals in science and they told us about reptiles, mammals, birds and insects.

First they showed us some corn snakes called Tutti Frutti and Little Red, they were smooth to touch. Snakes are reptiles, they have scales and breathe air.

Next we held some mice they were soft and warm. Mice are mammals. They have fur, breathe air and give their babies milk. We are mammals too.

There was a little tawny owl called Kiwick.  We touched one of her feathers that had dropped out. She flew across the room and into her cage.

Finally we saw some insects. Celia was a cockroach, she had a hard smooth body.  Scarlet was a stick insect and she looked just like a stick!

It was really interesting to see all the animals.

CREATIVE MATHS

THE RACE INTO SPACE

Today Major Tom set us a challenge to find find the most suitable candidate to send to the International Space Station. There is almost no gravity there and some astronauts perform better than others in these conditions. All of the candidates were tested in a Micro-Gravity Simulator to see how well they performed. Our mission was to analyse the test results and rank the candidates.

We started the morning working in teams and problem solving to create human sculptures. Then we had to work out times each candidate started and how many hours each one managed to stay in the simulator.

Once we knew this we could rank the candidates to show how well they did. Finally we reported back to Major Tom to help him work out who would be sent to the International Space Station.

We had a brilliant day!

Fish Skeleton

As part of our work on bodies we talked about animal skeletons.

Lots of animals have skeletons with bones a bit like ours – monkey, chicken, elephant, chameleon. We looked at pictures and could see the skull, spine, ribs, legs, jaw like we have.  Some animals like octopus, worms, slugs and starfish don’t have a skeleton at all.  Some animals have their skeleton on the outside like beetles, crab or snails.

 

We investigated a fish skeleton.  We used magnifying glasses to look at it in detail.  Some of us touched it’s eye or put our fingers in its mouth.  We could see its spine and little bones like ribs.  We could feel its skull. We saw its heart and stomach and talked about how fish breathe through their gills.