St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Junior Infants were really excited to do the Skittles Rainbow Experiment this week. (We’re not sure if it was because they love science or couldn’t wait to eat the left over skittles!)

This experiment shows that water molecules are more active in warm water than in cold water and as they come in contact with the sugar in the skittles they cause it to dissolve faster.

For the experiment we needed

• 1 pkt Skittles

• ¼ cup cold water

• 1/4 cup warm water

• 2 white plates Activity

To start we made predictions on what might happen and then we arranged the Skittles in a single row around the edge of the plate of each plate. We poured over enough cold water to cover all the Skittles and the plate itself on the first plate. Then we poured over enough warm water to cover all the Skittles and the plate itself on the second plate.

We watched and waited as a rainbow appears on the second plate, the colors will moved towards the middle and create a whirl of color. This didnt happen in the first plate! We discussed why this was the case.

Each group then got to try there own experiment to check out the results.

Of course we got to eat the left overs at the end!

Senior Infants spent all of last month learning about Space. We had a lot of fun doing different experiments and incorporating Space into our Aistear.

The different Aistear stations included our roleplay area which was the International Space Station, building a rocket in construction and playdough and making space passports in our writing station.

For Science, we experimented trying to launch a rocket into the air using bicarbonate soda and vinegar in a empty bottle with a cork lid. It was very exciting watching it launch into the air.

Our other Science lesson was trying to launch a paper rocket by blowing it with a straw. We tried different ways to see which was the most effective method to get our rocket to launch the furthest, this led to a race against each other in the hall!

Finally, Senior Infants spent a week making projects based on Space that were amazing! They ranged from planets, to rockets, to aliens and to solar systems. They were all very impressive and a lot of work was put in to making them!

We have been very busy in 5th class this month! We have been doing lots of STEM activities and improving our engineering skills! We worked on engineering a roller coaster made from paper. We have to work on our designs to allow a marble to move along our coaster!

We have also been learning about space this month! We completed a STEM activity creating rockets! We created some lovely space themed art too!

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.

4th class are learning all about Greece and we discovered that Greece was where the first Olympic Games was held. As a Stem challenge we decided to make our favourite Olympic Games and sports into table top challenges.

Each group picked a sport and began designing and creating ways they could make that into a table top game. We were delighted with our results and loved giving 3rd class a chance to play!
Take a look at our homemade Olympic Games:

If you’re looking for the answer, Fourth Class can tell you!

First, it is important to choose a lever and a fulcrum. We used a ruler (lever) and a pencil (fulcrum). In order to balance it we found its centre of gravity. We then tried balancing the lever using coins on either side. We found out that two of the same coins must be at the same distance on each end of the ruler in order for the lever to balance.

Take a look at our results:

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 see what would happen.

Within 2 minutes all three candy canes were starting to turn the liquids pink or red. It was definitely magic!

We observed the four glasses and compared the reactions. After break, we had our results and we could determine if our predictions were correct or not.

The cup with the warm water was the fastest liquid to make the candy cane dissolve.

The vinegar cup was the first liquid to remove all the red from the candy cane.

The cold water and milk removed the colour and disappeared but more slowly than other two liquids.

Next, we recorded our observations and results. We learned lots of new vocabulary words such as dissolve, prediction, result.

Even more interestingly and in the interest of science we discovered later that the quickest way to make a candy cane disappear was to eat it!!!

6th class have had a great month celebrating Anti – Bullying month during November.

It’s so important to celebrate this month in school in order to raise awareness about bullying and the many different forms it can take.

As senior students in our school, we feel a responsibility to lead by example and make sure that our school is an open, welcoming and inclusive place to be.

Some of the activities we took part in included walking debates about bullying, identifying trusted individuals who can help us if we are being bullied or know someone that is, a talk with a local Garda about cyberbullying and group work to discuss various scenarios that we might find ourselves in and what are appropriates ways to act and react.

We had a great time investigating and discussing all things scientific this year!

One of our favourite activities was when we linked our PE lesson with Science. We decided we would investigate our heart rates and the impact that certain exercises and activities have on our heart rate.

To begin with, we discussed and took our ‘resting’ heart rates. This was a little bit tricky at first (some of us were worried we didn’t have any 😅) but after some perseverance we became comfortable calculating them. We did this by counting the beats per minute we could feel on our wrists (use your right index and middle finger on the palm side of your left wrist) and necks (just below our ears and jawbones) – we counted for 15 seconds and then multiplied by 4 to get the BPM. We questioned why some heart rates are different and considered variables such as age, amount of exercise done daily and perhaps feeling nervous, stressed or indeed, relaxed.

We recorded these resting heart rate scores, and decided on some exercises that we wanted to put to the test, over the course of 1 minute each! We chose running, mini basketball, jumping jacks, throwing a ball and speed walking. We also made some predictions, including what exercises would raise our heartrates most and what we should observe after completing all 5 exercises. We decided to do the exercises outside and brought a stopwatch and our notebooks to record our results.

Our results were interesting and differed depending on the individual. We also think the order of the exercises may have affected our heart rates. For example, doing running and jumping jacks in a row, meant that our heart rates tended to stay up for longer.

Exercise and physical activity causes the heart rate to increase in order to supply the muscles with more oxygen to produce extra energy. Cardio/ running had the greatest effect on increasing the heart rates of the majority of class, as you can see from our results.

We’re going to take part in some mindfulness exercises next, to see what effect relaxation has on our heart rates.

November has been Anti-Bullying month in St. Peter’s. Each week for the month Junior Infants have been engaging in activities to learn more about what bullying is and what we can do if we or someone we know is being bullied. We discussed and watched videos on different bullying scenarios and how people might feel in different situations.

We talked about how as individuals we can achieve success but working together as a team and class we can be be even better.
We added some team work skills into our lessons like Cross the Arctic in PE and created a colourful collage to show what we can do when we work together.

Thankfully bullying isn’t a problem for us in St. Peter’s. In Junior Infants we have been working really hard on getting along, sharing and being a team since the start of the year.