St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Welcome to the 10th edition of the ‘St Peter’s Post’ and it’s absolutely packed! This week saw ‘Write A Book’ in full swing, the Virtual Science Fair continued and there were a number of fantastic podcasts. It was also a very busy week for comments on the blog – students and teachers loved reading every single one!

Our Virtual Science Fair continued this week with the following projects from 6th class:

• This project from Billy, Keane and Kevin asks ‘Can one hand react quicker than the other?’
• ‘Can we make a lightbulb light up without using any wires?’ asked Johnny, Dylan and Kyle
• And ‘Which slime is the strongest?’ asked Jamie, Robert, Sky and Sam
• In other Science Fair related news, Lester and Eduard tell us all about their trip to the BT Young Scientist Exhibition here.
• Finally, our home page for the Virtual Science Fair is here, with links to all the projects so far.

Other headlines from this week include:

• You can watch an Animoto with all the photos from the Christmas play here.
• Also from the Christmas play, 5th class posted a video of their ‘Elf Factor’ here.
• 2nd class made beautifully colourful clay birds – check them out here. (more…)

We had a great time today. We made lovely little clay birds and we added feathers. We love using clay. We hope you like our birds. TWEET TWEET!

Our birds in one big pic

Before Christmas, 5th class had a Little Book Club where we read the four nominees for the BGE Book Awards Children’s Book (Junior) award to our little cousins or brothers. Well done to Ameesh, Oisín, AaronG, Alan, Johnny and especially to AaronJ for leading it. Check out our podcast discussing how we got on:

Laureate na nÓg contacted us on Twitter today to let us know about the nomination process for children. We think that 5th class have already chosen their nomination – Chris Judge is highly praised by our Little Book Club. You can read more about the nomination process here.

Can you recommend any books for our next Little Book Club?

Wondering what our Student Council have been up to so far in Term 2? Have a listen here!

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This year, 5th class took on the Elf Factor as their class play for the Christmas concert. You can see photos from the Christmas play here and listen to 2nd class and their ‘Little Rascals’ play here. We hope you enjoy our video – we really enjoyed making it!

The Elf Factor from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

Today, 5th class are leaving comments for http://kidblog.org/MrsBoycesClass-4/ Their work is very good. You should check it out too and leave them some comments.

One of the very first ‘Wednesday for Parents’ posts was also one of our most popular – it listed a number of websites and online activities to help your child with place value. You can find that post here. When we planned a follow up post, fractions jumped out as an important one to cover. The activities below have been laid out so that you can choose a particular area of fractions to work on or revise, or you can choose from the games further down in the post to work on a more general area. As always, although we’ve checked out the websites, we can’t guarantee that they’re free of pop-ups, ads etc, that could lead your child to a different site. We recommend that you supervise your child’s use of these sites carefully.

What does your child feel they need to work on?

I need to work on fractions that have the same value. (more activities here and here)

I need to work on matching mixed fractions.

I need to work on matching equivalent fractions. (more activities here and here)

I need to work on putting fractions in order.

I need to work on adding fractions. (more activities here and here)

I need to work on changing improper fractions into mixed numbers.

I need to work on subtracting fractions. (more activities here)

I need to work on simplifying fractions. (more activities here )]

I need to work on identifying prime numbers.

I need to work on finding a fraction of a number.

I need to work on finding the lowest common denominator.

I need to work on finding the highest common factor.

I need to work on rounding mixed numbers to the nearest whole number.

I need to work on estimating fractions.

I need to work on number line fractions. (Tutorial here – more activities here)

Other fraction games:

Fraction Booster – this game introduces your child to different fraction activities as they level up.

Fraction flags – This is a great little game that asks your child to fill in squares on a flag according to the instructed fractions.

This link is more a series of tutorials rather than actual games – extremely useful to help with homework etc.

Melvin’s Make-A-Match – This game is all about matching equivalent fractions.

Fractotron – this game asks your child to compare fractions and ask if they’re less, equal to or more than a half. Good for estimation work.

Falling leaves – can be played as a two-player – works on finding a fraction of a number

If you’d like any more online games on fractions, let us know! Even better, let us know what your favourite games are in the comments. These activities are intended as a support for homework or your child’s home learning, but you are also always welcome to call into your child’s teacher to discuss any concerns you have about your child’s progress.

What topic would you like to see covered in our Maths online series next?

Aaron here, Robert’s out today but he made a podcast yesterday asking us how our ‘Write a Book’ project is going.

Yesterday, I ran out of ideas so I started going back over my work. I found parts to add more detail into. When I was reading over my work, I was asking myself questions as if I was the reader. For example, I had written that I was nervous and when I read back over it, I added 4 sentences saying why I was nervous. I like editing because it makes your book much better and you’ll get more readers. Here’s a picture of my editing work:

Thanks for reading – that’s all for now,

Aaron

Our project asked the question ‘which slime is the strongest?’ We made two types of slime – one was with borax, PVA glue and water. The second was made from cornflour and water. The cornflour slime didn’t work because it just stayed as a liquid but the borax stretched well.

We found the instructions online but if we were making the cornflour slime again, we’d use less water and more cornflour. We made slime in 2nd class and it was really strong. We think if we made more of the borax slime, it would work better. We also could have added food colouring to make it look more like slime.

Our favourite part of the project was squeezing and pulling the slime. We enjoyed talking to the judges and it was a really good day. We weren’t too nervous because we knew our project really well.

Thanks for reading about it,

Jamie, Robert, Sky and Sam

The question was ‘can we make a lightbulb light up without using any wires?’ We were able to make it work using tinfoil as a conductor.

When we were researching our project, we found out that it’s not just wires that can conduct electricity. We found that tinfoil was the handiest one to use instead of a wire because you can twist it and it’s flexible. We didn’t think it would really work, so we were surprised when it did.

Our favourite part of the project was when it actually worked. We liked talking to the judges and we enjoyed making our display. You can try it out at home easily with a lightbulb, battery and tinfoil.

Thanks for reading about our project,

Kyle, Johnny and Dylan