Step 1 - Science - Energy and Forces (Sound insulating in 3rd Class)

March 20, 2018 admin stfergals

3rd class have been learning all about sound. We learned how sound moves through vibrations passed along air molecules.

We closed our eyes and listened carefully to all of the noises we could hear. After 1 minute we had to brain storm all of the sounds we could hear. It's amazing how many sounds you notice when you listen carefully! We could even hear dogs barking quite far away.

We explored how sound travels more easily through solids, as the air molecules are packed tightly together. We could hear the ruler vibrating off the table MUCH wore clearly when we put our ear to it!

After discussing times when we may need to insulate sounds (like the walls of a music studio or a pair of ear protecting head phones) we began our experiment!

Each pair took two plastic cups to cover our ears and a number of possible insulating materials. We stuffed the cups with the same amount of each material and listened to our music speakers. After each test we scored the materials on a scale of 1-10 (10 meaning we could hear the music perfectly, 0 meaning we couldn't hear a sound). We even listened to the same song every time to ensure it was a very fair test! (Havana ooh-na-na is very catchy!)

We found that Cotton Material was the best sound insulator. We think this is because cotton is good at absorbing things, and maybe that's why cotton is used in clothing, as it could also absorb sweat.

We really enjoyed learning all about sound!

We will be showing this experiment at the Science Fair in April :)

Step 2 - Technology - Coding day 2- 4th class (Scratch)

March 15, 2018 admin stfergals

On Tuesday, Ben showed us a game of Pac-Man he coded for us to play. It took 25 hours of coding to make it! We are all coding games on scratch coding. We wrote about what we did in the computer room......

Drawing and designing a character for their game.

These girls are coding a fashion game where you can dress up your character!

Coding a football game!

Making a ghost fly across the city!

Making a ballerina twirl!

Making the sprite run down the road!

Step 1 - Science - Living Things - How Do Plants Drink?

February 13, 2018 admin stfergals

In Ms. Kelly’s Senior Infant class, we investigated how plants drink.

Firstly, we discussed all the ways we thought that a plant might get water. We had lots of ideas!

For our experiment we used glasses, water, celery and food colouring. Our control was a piece of celery placed into a glass of water without any additive. This control makes sure our experiment is working properly.

We filled the glasses with an equal amount of water and marked the water level with a marker. This will show us how much water the plant drinks. We added green food colouring to one glass and red food colouring to another glass. Nothing was added to the control.

We split the stalk of celery in two and put one half into the green food colouring and the other half into the red food colouring.

The next day we came back and observed our experiment. We could see that the water level in all glasses had decreased. The control had not changed but the other piece of celery had started to show signs of discolouration.

We then documented our experiment by drawing a labelled diagram. We found that the coloured water had travelled through tubes inside the celery stalk and into the leaves of the plant!