St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

We have just finished another exciting Science Week in St. Peter’s. Junior Infants loved getting to grips with this week’s STEM lessons. Early in the week we explored magnetism. We talked about what magnets are and watched a short video on magnetism. We then investigated things that were magnetic by testing our magnets out around the classroom and school. Finally we came back and tried to predict which items from a group were magnetic and which were not and tested these out. Later in the week we ventured into early programming skills. In small groups we got to play with Beebots. We... 

We had a great week celebrating Science Week in Ms. Kane’s class, one of our favourite celebrations of the year! We love taking part in STEM activities on a regular basis and were excited to try lots of new ideas this week. We listened to Professor Luke O’ Neill talking about coronavirus, watched David Attenborough’s new documentary ‘A Life on Our Planet’ and used Lego WeDo! to design our visions for the future. We learned lots about coronavirus by listening to Professor Luke O’ Neill answering questions on RTÉ Junior. Professor O’ Neill is a scientist... 

We kicked off Science week in 2nd class by diving into the theme of ‘Space and Planets’! We learned all about the different planets, the ISS and rockets. STEAM: We decided to get creative and make our very own planets! We researched planets, painted them, gave them names and constructed the posters! We wrote and presented to the class what it would be like to live on these planets! STEM Challenge: Launching an Asteroid Our first challenge was to create a catapult which would allow us to launch our “asteroids”. We had a competition to see whose asteroid travelled the... 

We were learning all about pets in 1st class so we decided to make homes for some of the pets we had discussed in class. Each group made a pet rock and we made a whole class brainstorm on what our pet rocks would need in their homes to survive. Take a look at our brainstorm: After we discussed our pets needs, we started to plan for our homes, making sure we included the essentials! Have a look at some of our plans. We finally got started on our designing and creating part of science week. Take a look at how our finishing products turned out… would you be happy for your... 

Today in first class we celebrated Maths Week by going on a math hunt around the school! We found different 2D shapes, lengths, numbers and worked out our speed while running and doing jumping jacks. we had to unlock all of these challenges together as we moved around different areas of the school , it was so much fun!  

We got a great start to Maths Week in first class by finding 2D shapes in the classroom. Each group got a different shape that they had to search for in the room! Take a look at what we found: We then made some 2D monsters with the new shapes we had learnt about. Take a look at our creations:  

Engineers Week 2020 This year for Engineering week, 4th Class took a trip to Bray Library to meet with a local Bray Engineer to learn about the important role of being an engineer.                                                                                                            We learned... 

In celebration of Science Week 2019 we decided to carry out another STEM activity! We love designing and making and wasted no time in deciding what STEM activity to try this time. We have been learning about World War 2 this month and last week we watched some footage of the D – Day parachute landings in Normandy in 1944. We wanted to learn some more about how the parachutes that the soldiers used worked and what they were made from. We looked at various video clips and found out that the parachutes were often made from silk and nylon. We were surprised as we thought silk was a soft material... 

Earlier this month we decided it could be interesting to learn more about the force and nature of hurricanes as the news was covering a lot on Hurricane/Storm Lorenzo. We decided undertaking a STEM challenge might be a fun way to do this! Firstly, we needed to carry out some research! We looked online for some footage of hurricanes and also read some helpful articles that advised people what to do in the event of a hurricane landing near them. We learned that hurricane winds can travel up to 200 miles per hour and that hurricanes form in the sea. They also tend to have heavy rain. The centre of... 

Second and Fifth class decided to join together to celebrate Engineers Week on Wednesday and had lots of fun completing a STEM challenge. We worked together in small groups to try to build a structure that was strong and tall. We had to build using either a square or rectangular shape because we wanted to see if this would make any difference to how strong and tall our structures would be. Teamwork was also very important! We used plasticine and and small match sticks to create our structures. Check out some of our photographs below to see us in action!     We worked really well...