St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

6th class decided to take part in a Design and Make STEM activity to celebrate Halloween! Take a look at the instructions below! We were given a task to design and make a 3D Hallowe’en monster or ghost and we had to make it move! We had to follow these instructions! We had to ensure all the instructions were followed carefully and accurately! We used classroom materials to make our creations and we were impressed by each groups individuality and creativity! Ensuring design is decorated! Teamwork! Design process! Testing for movement.Final preparations! Using our knowledge... 

Before Christmas, 5th class were working to create a gingerbread house! We had to think about lots of different things before we built our houses. How big were the biscuits? How would we stick the together? What would be the best way to design our house? After planning, we began to work on engineering our designs to create a stable home for the gingerbread man that would stand on it’s own.  

With all the excitement of Christmas we thought we would do a festive experiment. Our questions –Which liquid will cause our candy cane to disappear the fastest? To conduct our experiment, we needed: 4 glasses, 4 candy canes, vinegar, warm water, milk and cold water. We labelled our 4 clear glasses and then filled them with warm water, cold water, milk and vinegar making sure to put the same amount of liquid in each glass. Then, we made predictions. The vast majority thought the warm water would melt the candy cane the quickest! We put one candy cane in each cup and watched to... 

We have had a busy start to the year in 6th and have been reading a new novel, ‘Tom Crean’. We are thoroughly enjoying the story about the brave and heroic Antarctic explorer, who hails from Annascaul in Co. Kerry. We recommend that everyone reads this book as it is truly inspiring and at times, unbelievable! Tom Crean Learning about Antarctica has been extremely interesting and we have had many questions about the Earth’s least – populated and coldest continent. Using our atlases we have researched the places that Tom Crean visited on his multiple expeditions... 

Fourth class started the year with a great STEM challenge called ‘Design a Bridge’. During this challenge the children tested different bridge models to see which was the strongest. Below you will see the pictures of flat bridges, arched bridges, walled bridges and corrugated bridges. We made this a fair test by all using the same type and amount of books. We also kept the distance between the books at 15cm. Our results found the walled bridge was strong, the arched bridge was stronger and the corrugated bridge was the strongest.  

In 4th Class we have spent some time learning about Renewable Energy and the different types of renewable materials. We read the story ‘The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind’ by William Kamkwamba which is a true story based on William saving his town by constructing a windmill to provide electricity. To learn more about wind energy, we made our own wind turbines. Wind Powered STEM challenge As class we discussed the different materials we could use to build our wind turbines. We tried and tested different types of paper and card for the windmill blades, along with different shapes and... 

The longest Snowman: We divided into groups of three. Each group got 6 sheets of paper, 30 cm of sellotape and 2 pipe cleaners. A classroom timer of 12 minutes was set on the board. The aim of the challenge was that each group had to make the longest snowman they could in the time given. Take a look at the different ways we made our snowmen: Christmas Catapults: We decided on an easy structure to follow to make our catapults. All we needed was a spoon, lollipop sticks and elastic bands. They turned out amazing! When they were made we tested them in loads of challenges- who... 

We were delighted to take part in STEM for Fun recently in the school hall. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Different stations were set up around the hall all containing elements of STEM. Junior Infants really loved the different challenges. They were tasked with constructing the highest tower they could out of paper cups and giant playing cards. They also had to make their own paper planes and measure to see how far they travelled counting in steps. It was very exciting getting to explore programming with Beebots, trying to input the correct instructions...