St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Welcome to our submission for the Discover Primary Science and Maths award for 2018. This is our 13th year taking part in the Awards! Once again this year we are applying for the Plaque of STEM Excellence. This award is given to schools that carry out extensive work in science, technology, engineering and maths, all of which are very important in St. Peter’s. This is the 4th year that we have had Junior and Senior Infants taking part in the award! It is great to see the young scientists have so much fun learning about Science and Maths. This year, we did a whole school experiment involving... 

In Senior Infants we were learning all about what happens to the flowers and plants in Spring time. We decided to grow our very own little seed pots in our classroom. First we had a class discussion on: What does a plant need to grow? Are any of these things more important than the others? What happens if a plant doesn’t get enough water, heat, light or food? Can a plant get too much of a good thing? What might happen if it does? How similar are plants to people? What do we need if we’re going to grow up strong?   YOU WILL NEED: Seeds Plant pots A bag of compost Water Our Instructions  Place... 

4th class conducted an experiment on the effects of different heights and materials on the speed of toy cars. We watched a range of videos as a stimulus and get us thinking on different heights. We then wanted to see if this was actually true. We wrote up our opinions as a class on what we thought would be the outcome. We used a variety of materials including toy cars (different types-large and small), ramps, school books and a metre stick. At the end of the lesson we came to the conclusion in our results that the higher the ramp the further the car would go on the ramp and onto a flat surface.... 

First Class have been learning all about static electricity this week in Science. Firstly we talked about the difference between static electricity and current electricity. The children shared times when they experienced static electricity like when they touched a hand rail and got a shock or heard crackling noises when they took off woolly jumpers. We talked about why this happens. The children experimented with static electricity by rubbing balloons on their hair to make it stand up!   We wanted to investigate which piece of the school uniform produces the best ‘static’. The... 

Light and Materials   3rd class have been learning all about light this month! First we chatted about some different light sources. We brainstormed loads of different sources of light in our groups and discussed how important light is in our lives.   Ms. Seery then told us about a problem she was having… Her two boys like to read when they go to bed, but they keep waking each other up because their torches are too bright! She asked us to help her by designing lamp shades so that everyone in her house could get some sleep and still read!   We discussed the different kinds of materials... 

We having been learning all about plants in Junior Infants. We learned plants need water, air and sunlight to grow. We have been growing egg heads – here is our procedural writing for how to make them! Check out our bossy verbs and our list of things that you need to make the egg heads. What you need: Cress seeds Eggs shells Soil Googly eyes Felt tips How to: Boil the eggs until they’re hard boiled. Take the tops off gently and clean the inside of the eggs gently, so they don’t break. Stick googly eyes on our egg shells. Next, draw a face on the egg shells with felt tips. Fill... 

Last week, 2nd class read a wonderful book called Iggy Peck Architect by Andrea Beaty. In this story there’s a little boy who is always building things. When he went on a school tour, the bridge to their picnic area collapsed and he and his class had to build a new bridge to get back across. This got us thinking about how we could make bridges. We looked at a few different types of bridges and their structures and talked about local bridges we know of. This was all under the strand of Energy and Forces. We then got into pairs and drew a plan of the bridges we wanted to make. We looked at... 

5th class conducted an experiment this week using the strand energy and forces and the strand unit heat. The objective of the experiment was to measure and record temperature using a thermometer. The children had to compare the heat insulation properties of different materials. These materials included, aluminium foil, fabric and tissue paper. Each group had to ‘insulate’ their cups using the materials provided. Each group was given a recording sheet and the children had to check the temperature of each cup throughout the day. When the children had finished their experiments, they wrote a short... 

STEM challenge number 1: Design and make a paper aeroplane which can float. 6th class passed this test with flying colours 🙂 !! They were tasked with designing and making a floating paper aeroplane. With a homework pass at stake for the winning design, we had some heavy negotiations about the best and fairest test to grade our designs.  We decided that our floatplanes would need to carry/hold 5 marbles when floating. We worked in pairs to design and make a paper floatplane.  It was important to use waterproof materials for this task, but also to ensure our designs could also function as planes. ...