St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

We all know that chocolate is delicious when it’s melted to make chocolate brownies, Easter eggs or chocolate sauce 😋. Fourth class decided to try to find out at what temperature chocolate melts at. The question we asked ourselves was:  Do all types of chocolate melt at the same temperature?   Step 1: To investigate our question we chose to use white, milk and dark chocolate and placed them into tin foil trays. Step 2: We then made our predictions and estimates as to what temperature we thought each type of chocolate would melt at.   Step 3: We then carefully added warm... 

On March 6th, 6th class took part in the first ever ESB Science Blast in the RDS. We were really proud to attend and to present our project on the science of the playground. We had a brilliant day, attending two workshops, speaking to the judges and exploring the other stands. Over the last few months, we’ve taken part in a number of investigations related to the playground. These investigations taught us a lot about slides, zip lines and surfaces, but more importantly, we learned a lot about fair testing, the process of design and make and the skills of STEM. Thanks to the RDS and ESB for... 

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... 

First Class completed their first STEM activity this week.  We have been learning all about houses and homes in SESE and completed a STEM activity based on that. We read the story of the three little pigs and talked about the different materials used in each house. The class were then presented with a challenge. Their challenge question was: ‘Can your team design and build a house that the big, bad wolf cannot blow down?’ The children split into six teams. Two teams made a house from straw (plastic straws), two teams made a house from wood (lollipop sticks) and two teams made a house from... 

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...