St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

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... 

Every year we use K’nex to help us to explore and improve our construction and engineering skills. This year, our K’nex challenge became part of our Engineering Week 2014 set of activities. Previous challenges include building a bridge, building a lifeboat and building a quad bike. This year we decided to have a local slant on the activity. As you all know, Bray is the hometown of Katie Taylor. We set a challenge to the students to build a tower called after Katie, that would be the centre-point if Bray ever hosted the Olympics. We can dream! The design needed to be: 1. Between 50cm... 

Welcome to Engineers Week in St Peter’s! This morning in 5th class, we started thinking about what we know about engineers. We started by thinking individually about words that come to mind when we hear the word ‘engineer’. We also drew pictures of what we think an engineer looks like. Next, we worked in pairs to discuss what we know about engineers. Then we shared our work with the rest of the class. We made a Wordle to show what we think an engineer does, at the start of Engineers Week. We’re going to make another one on Friday to assess what we’ve learned in the... 

Today, we investigated circuits and Electric Paint. Part of the work of an engineer is to design and to build everyday items so that they work better! Electric Paint can be used instead of wires to conduct electricity. This is our finished work! We used a Vine to show off a selection of them! We’ve been working on a kit from Bare Conductive, which you can find out more about here. We’re big fans of Electric Paint and we used it previously in our school-winning project for the Mini-Scientist. We had to let the paint dry.  

Did you know that there’s not just one type of engineering? Just like a doctor can specialise as a GP or a surgeon, the career of an engineer can be very specialised too! Today, we learned about the different disciplines of engineering here on the Steps website. We each chose a different area of engineering that we would be interested in. Well done to Alan for leading today’s podcast! What area of engineering would you be interested in?  

  Engineers’ Week took place between the 25th of February and the 3rd of March. We all took part in Science experiments and K’nex challenges to get us thinking about what life would be like to be an engineer! Third Class wanted to find out more about aeronautical engineering as many of us love to make and experiment with paper aeroplanes. Here is how we carried out our investigation.  

Congratulations to the following boys who were on the team that won our Engineering Week quiz – Dylan Hampenstall (Mr. Kinsella’s class), Jack Barsoum (Ms. Whyte’s class), Alan Duda (Ms. Byrne’s class), Adam Farrell and Sam Barsoum (Mr. Foley’s class)  and Cian Cleary (Ms. Brennan’s class).  Everyone really enjoyed themselves and had a great time answering questions about science, technology and engineering.  

        We are all really excited about Engineer’s Week which is on from 25th February to the 3rd of March next week! You should visit the site here for more information – it has some great experiments and k’nex challenges to get you thinking about what life as an engineer is like. We’re all so excited to try out some of the challenges. Come back to our site soon to see some of the things we are going to get up and explore for Engineer’s Week 2013!