St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Our project was called ‘Fizz Kids’ and our question was ‘which combination of carbonated drinks and Mentos produces the best reaction?’

We found out that Diet Coke and Coke produced the best reaction because it exploded the highest. The fizzy water made bubbles the longest but it didn’t explode so we concluded that sugar had some effect on the reaction. You can see more about our research in this video.

Mini-Scientist – Fizz Kids from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

In our research, we found out that the ingredients in the Mentos react with the Diet Coke. The Mentos also has little pits on the surface that releases carbon dioxide very quickly, which causes a big reaction as it forces itself out of the bottle.

Our favourite part was testing the project, but the research was also fun because we watched videos of reactions.

Alan, Andy, Johnny and Robert

Hi, I’m Robert and I’m in 5th class. I like writing all types of stories and my favourite books are ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’, ‘Big Nate’ and ‘The boy in the Striped Pyjamas’.

Our school is taking part in the Write A Book project. You get to write a book on whatever you want to. I’m going to be blogging over the next few weeks to tell you how my class is getting on.

So far, we’ve picked four suggestions for stories we might write. We picked four so that we had more choice to pick from. My story is about a king with a stammer. My other three choices included a story of what the fox really says, a biography of Muhammad Ali and the life of Bruce Lee. I chose my one because I saw ‘The King’s Speech’ over Christmas and I could see how I could write a new story based on it.

Tonight, we’re going to storyboard our book. This is so we can plan our beginning, middle and ending. We have a special copy for our first draft. We’re going to write our story on every second line so that it’ll be easier to edit.

I think the hardest part is going to be editing my book, but I’m really looking forward to writing the story. Most of my class have picked their stories but some aren’t sure.

That’s all – I’ll keep you updated!

Robert

My project was called ‘Bubbles in a bottle’ and my question was ‘what quantity of food colouring will make the best lava lamp?’

You can see me explain my project in this video. I found out that 20 drops of food colouring makes the best lava lamp because it gives a better effect when the water is darker.

Mini-Scientist – lava lamp from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

In my research, I learned that oil is less dense than water so it floats on top of the water. I learned that the Alka-Seltzer mixes with the water to produce bubbles of carbon dioxide, which pushes up through the oil. I learned that there are two types of food colouring. Chemical is made in a lab, organic is made from plants.

My favourite part was when I actually tested my project. Emily from Intel judged my project and I went first. I didn’t mind explaining my project at all. Here are some photos from my project. Thanks for reading all about it!

Oisín

During the first term, our students from 4th, 5th and 6th classes worked really hard to prepare science projects for the Intel Mini-Scientist showcase. For all who didn’t get a chance to see the projects on the day, we have decided to hold our very first Virtual Science Show. Over the next month, we’re going to showcase our projects as part of our participation in the Discover Primary Science Award. We look forward to telling you all about our projects and reading your comments. Watch out for guest appearances from 2nd and 3rd, who were too young for the Mini-Scientist Showcase this year!

You can keep track of all the projects on this post as we’ll update it every time we add a new one!

Bubbles in a Bottle

Fizz Kids

Cool Crystals

Rollercoaster on a poster

Electrical Edibles

Can one hand react quicker than the other?

2nd Class had a great time presenting their class play ‘The Little Rascals’ in December. We picked the story because we love the film and Ms. Brennan wrote some lines for us and gave us parts. We wanted to have fun and have a story that would include girls and boys, and especially something that would be a reminder that we are the first class in St. Peter’s with boys and girls! Why not listen to our performance here? You should also check out our video of some of our characters. We hope you like it!

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/128154170″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Make sure you follow Polly’s example and get to bed nice and early – if you want to track Santa, check out our Christmas websites edition of ‘Wednesday for Parents’ from last week here.

Wishing all of our students, staff, family and friends a very merry Christmas! 

This week, alongside the excitement of the play, 5th class were busy making Christmas logs! The boys were very grateful to Ms Sexton’s mam and dad, who provided the logs (nicely chopped with the spaces for the candles neatly drilled in, much to the relief of Miss) and the candles and the bows and the holly!

Here’s an Animoto to show off our work:

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to the great support of the family and friends of St. Peter’s, we managed to win our EduBlogs award! This is a huge achievement and recognition of the work done by the children of our school. The Edublogs Awards are recognised internationally and we are privileged to have our name beside so many other outstanding achievements online.

We thank you sincerely for our nominations and votes. It will encourage us to use sound and technology to enhance our lessons further. The award is the best Christmas present we could get. To acknowledge our thanks, the boys and girls made this message this morning. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas from us to you!

From Ms. Brennan and Ms. Sexton.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125711512″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for making yesterday’s concert such a great success. We were so proud of all of our students and thank our audience for creating such a fantastic atmosphere. I’d like to say a special thanks to all of the staff for their commitment and dedication to your children. Last night topped off an amazing term in what is a historic year for our school.

Yesterday also brought great news for our blog! Thanks to your support and votes we won our first EduBlogs Award, recognising our podcasting work. This is a great achievement and we really hope to build on this as we continue to work towards our Digital Schools Award.

We’d like to wish Ms. Hyland all the best on her maternity leave. We’ll really miss her funny stories. We can’t wait to meet the latest addition to our Peter’s family.

Finally, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope Santa is good to you all!

Have a lovely break and see you on the 6^th January, 2014!

Emer.

Today marks the last ‘Wednesday for Parents’ post of 2013! We hope to gradually build up a bank of resources for parents so if you find something that we should be telling others about, please let Ms Sexton know!

This week’s post is all about fun websites for the days leading up to Christmas! (It’s also quite a short one – mainly due to this – very excited to see you all tomorrow!) As always, all sites were checked when this post was published but St Peter’s is not responsible for the content of external websites.

First one is the official NORAD Santa tracker. The Santa Tracker doesn’t begin until Christmas Eve but in the meantime, you can explore the North Pole. Excellent site!

Google have also accessed Santa’s map and have plans to track him on Christmas Eve. In the meantime, they have daily interactions and activities. This site is very child-friendly and definitely worth a look!

And for the little people who keep asking, is it Christmas yet? Find out here

Finally, during all the chat with the students about Christmas over the last few weeks, it’s become clear that, while they enjoy the presents and especially the excitement around Santa’s visit, the highlight for Christmas is spending time with the people they love. All their retellings of the Christmas story have focused on the part about the family, and they are quite aware of the ‘reason for the season’. With that in mind, the final thing I want to share with you today is an ad by Excentric. Maybe you’ve seen it before, but if not, it’s definitely worth a look!

Merry Christmas everyone and we’ll be back in the New Year with more ‘Wednesday for Parents’ posts!