Science Week in 1st and 2nd Class

Happy Science Week!

In 1st and 2nd class we have been learning about space which provided so many opportunities for science week.

We started this week by looking at astronauts and their spacesuits. Spacesuits are designed carefully to help the astronauts survive their space adventures. Having learned about primary life support systems, control modules and much more, the children were challenged to design their own spacesuits for travelling.

We also learned about space travel and looked at the distinctive shape rockets have. We discovered that rockets are aerodynamic and the cone or point at the top of the rocket allows the air to flow more easily around the rocket to help it fly. The children then designed a spacecraft in groups that they thought would be suitable to get to space. Some of the groups found that their lego did not allow them to create an aerodynamic shape, so they designed alternative spacecrafts.

We also spent some time learning about Neil Armstrong and will learn about some more space explorers this coming week. Stay tuned for space explorer projects coming soon.

Maths Week in 1st and 2nd Class

We had lots of fun celebrating Maths Week in 1st and 2nd class.

We were learning about shapes so were challenged to make human sized shapes using all of the people in our groups. It turns out that circles are tricky to make using bodies if you don’t want any corners.

Second class started to learn about square corners which are more commonly known as right angles. The children went on a square corner hunt around the classroom to see how many they could find.

We went on a shape hunt outside using our shape magnifying glasses. There are lots of circles and rectangles in the school grounds, but semicircles were a little trickier to find. Some very observant members of the class noticed that our neighbour, the highland cow, has a semicircular shaped nose.

We ended our week by creating some shape monsters. It was interesting to see how many corners and sides our monsters had, some even had square corners.

Our Humpty Dumpty Challenge

This week in Junior Infants we did a number of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths activities from our class wonder wall. 

On Monday the children completed the Humpty Dumpty challenge.  They were tasked with designing a protective device to take Humpty Dumpty (or in this case some hard boiled eggs) safely to the ground without it cracking.

First of all we discussed how we could protect the eggs.  We talked about the materials we might use.

We then designed a fair test, with the eggs all being dropped from an agreed height which was the same for each group.

Each group then worked together to sketch their designs and to formulate a plan.

Groups used a variety of materials to protect their eggs and when time was up we all predicted what the outcomes would be.  Cracked or not cracked. 

Our results were that two groups had eggs which cracked and three groups had eggs which did not crack. It was a very enjoyable activity.