St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Atmospheric pressure is the air all around us. It weighs on us all the time, but we can’t feel it. First the atmospheric pressure (or the tiny air molecules all around us) presses against the bottom of the cardboard same way it presses against us. This pressure holds the card up. But the weight of the water should still be heavy enough to push it off right? That’s what most people would think, but if you look at the top of your upside down glass, you can see a small pocket of air. Now, the air outside the glass is at one pressure and the air inside the glass is at another. There isn’t... 

Well done to everyone who did this week’s STEM activity at home. It was brilliant to see all the different materials that worked for the experiment. Here’s some videos and pictures to show you! 1st class 2nd class Senior infants Junior infants 2nd class 5th class  

Hi everyone! This week we are starting weekly STEM activities. I will upload them to the blog every Tuesday. I will use materials that people will have at home so you can try them out yourselves. We would love to see you recreate the experiments. You can show us by sending pictures in! I want to get you thinking during these activities, so I won’t be giving you the explanation to the experiments straight away. Next week I will explain how and why this activity works, but we’d love to hear your thoughts first! Good luck and enjoy 🙂  

This month in 4th Class we are learning about the topic of ‘Transport’. In celebration of Science Week, we started off the week using a K’nex STEM challenge to create a hot air balloon model! We continued the week with another STEM activity and asked the question – ‘How do parachutes work?’ Parachutes need to be able to catch air inside them so we spent some time thinking of what materials we could use for our parachutes. Then we spent time designing our parachutes. Each group received the same amount of materials and time to complete the activity. We... 

5th Class had great fun investigating, exploring and creating for Science Week 2020. At the beginning of the week we used the Lego WeDo kits to create satellites, robots and windmills. We first had to create our Lego model. We then used Bluetooth to connect our creations to tablets. From there we could program our Lego creations. We could make them move, spin, change colour and make noises. We have been learning all about Space. One child in the class cashed in their Dojo Points to teach the class a lesson. He chose to teach us about rockets and how they launch. He recorded a video... 

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... 

We have had a very busy month in Ms. Kane’s class. We’ve enjoyed celebrating Maths Week, taking part in STEM activities, baking and celebrating Hallowe’en! Maths Week was a super opportunity for us to play some of our favourite problem solving games like draughts, Jenga and Frustration! We also took part in Place Value races in the hall and loved watching Maths TV. Fractions!Teamwork!Problem solving! A close game! We loved taking part in a simple STEM challenge to see which team could build the longest paper chain. It sounds easy but we’d recommend lots of teamwork...