Sunday, July 13, 2008

Water, Water Everywhere

During Term 2 we made lots of interesting discoveries about water, and its changing states. We found what things floated and what sunk. We also discovered ways to make floating things sink, and how to float things that normally sink in water. We even made a needle float on the top of water (using surface tension).



After planning model mountains complete with huts, trees and animals, we built these in the sandpit and discovered what happens to these things when it rains. Now we know how rivers are made, and how powerful water can be.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Pirate Maths Measurement


We spent 3 weeks learning about measuring length. We learnt to order and compare things by length and also to measure length using centimetres and metres.

The Room 4 pirate crew braved the stormy seas one bleak wintery day to measure and make Captain Blood's sailing ship fleet. Our ships were 10 metres long with 3 masts and lots of special features like a crow's nest, a gangplank, portholes and plenty of man-eating fish swimming around in the sea.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Our Science Beach Trip

Our Junior Syndicate classes went to the beach on Monday to make sand structures. We made a prediction about what we thought would happen to them overnight. Most of us thought that they would still be there the next day when we came back to look.













We came back the next day to see what had happened to our structures. Oh dear! What a surprise. Most of us found that it looked very different. We realised that the tide had come in and washed away most of our structure even though we had built walls around our work or built behind rocks. What a change the sea can make in a short time.