St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

You may have noticed the new noticeboard outside 5th class focusing on their recent adventures in Design and Make.   It’s all part of Ms Sexton’s course in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and as you can see from the Prezi – the students of 5th class had all of the good ideas in this lesson! Click on the title of the post to check out our Vines and see what happened when we tested them – watch Adam’s closely!  

A couple of weeks ago, we were thrilled and excited to get news that we’d won a prize from STEPS for our work during Engineer’s Week. Sam, AaronG, LukeOB and Davy from 5th class had seen Scientific Sue in action at the Intel Regional Finals of the Mini-Scientist and they raised the excitement levels by telling everyone how cool her show was! You can check out her website here – we highly recommend her show! One of the coolest things about the prize was that we were allowed to invite other schools to join in the fun. The first session of the day was at 9.45.  

Yesterday was an amazing day for our school. After just 13 months of blogging and our website launching just a couple of weeks ago… we have managed to receive not one, but TWO Eircom Junior Spider nominations! You can see the full shortlist here! This is a huge achievement for our school, and something that the boys and girls in St. Peter’s can be very proud of. The nominations will encourage us to keep using ICT and social media to learn from and communicate well with the outside world. As a result of our nominations, we have been invited to the Google European Head Office in Dublin... 

Check out the incredible shortlist of nominees for the 2014 Eircom Junior Spider Awards. We’re delighted to feature among such a high standard! Well done to our fellow nominees. We look forward to meeting you all! **** Project: Clontuskert Tribune Newspaper, St. Augustine’s N.S. Clontuskert Craggagh Blue Star, Craggagh NS NETNS Wildlife Zone, Newbridge Educate Together National School St.Brigid’s Greystones, Green Schools Blog, St.Brigid’s NS, Greystones The Baking Buddies, Rathoe N.S. The Laois Plantation Project, Killeen N.S. These Boots Are Made For Walking, St Ibars N.S. Clohamon Best... 

We’ve had a ball with Engineer’s Week this week! Here’s a round up post of all the activities that took place in different classes over the week… 2nd Class made Apple Mummies! You’ll find out how they did it here. Our apple mummies! They also did the ‘raw egg’ test. It is definitely something that you could all try at home! Find out how to do it here! Our raw egg test What the egg looked like after the vinegar dissolved the shell! We put it over the light to be able to see through it! When we looked at electrical engineering we made string telephones. We... 

Our project asked the question ‘which slime is the strongest?’ We made two types of slime – one was with borax, PVA glue and water. The second was made from cornflour and water. The cornflour slime didn’t work because it just stayed as a liquid but the borax stretched well. We found the instructions online but if we were making the cornflour slime again, we’d use less water and more cornflour. We made slime in 2nd class and it was really strong. We think if we made more of the borax slime, it would work better. We also could have added food colouring to make it look... 

The question was ‘can we make a lightbulb light up without using any wires?’ We were able to make it work using tinfoil as a conductor. When we were researching our project, we found out that it’s not just wires that can conduct electricity. We found that tinfoil was the handiest one to use instead of a wire because you can twist it and it’s flexible. We didn’t think it would really work, so we were surprised when it did. Our favourite part of the project was when it actually worked. We liked talking to the judges and we enjoyed making our display. You can try it... 

Our project was called ‘Does one hand react quicker than the other?’ We tested our question using two tests – one was by putting your hand into a bowl of ice and seeing how long you could leave it there in seconds. The other test was the ruler test, where you let the ruler go and see how quickly you can catch it again. We found that with the ice, your dominant hand can last much longer in the ice than your non-dominant hand. There wasn’t as much of a difference in the ruler test, which surprised us because we thought it would have a much greater difference. When we were... 

My project was called ‘Electrical Edibles’ and my question was ‘can you conduct electricity using fruit and vegetables?’ I found that I wasn’t able to power a lightbulb using fruit and vegetables during the actual project, but when I used a clock kit, I was able to. I found a picture of a Christmas tree powered by Brussels Sprouts. If my mum asked me why I wasn’t eating my Brussels Sprouts, I could say that I was saving them for something important. Photo credit  

Our title was ‘Rollercoaster on a poster’ and our question was ‘what effect does the surface have on how far a KNEX car travels?’ We found out that tinfoil was the smoothest surface so it helped the car to travel faster. We timed it by using a stopwatch. There was very little friction between the tinfoil and the KNEX wheel, so there was nothing to slow it down. Our favourite part was Ameesh’s victory dance. We liked building our KNEX structure with Mr Kinsella. It was easy to explain our project to the judge and she gave us a good comment. Thanks for reading...