To celebrate St Andrews Day we are learning about Scottish inventors in the discovery room this week. We started by asking “What is an inventor?”

• ”It’s someone who builds lots of stuff.”
• “They make robots.”
• “An inventor makes stuff.”

Then we learned about Henry Faulds who invented finger printing. We discussed what we know about fingerprints, what they can be used for and what makes each one unique.

• “Police use them to catch baddies.”
• ”We use them for mysteries.”
• ”There’s hundreds of little lines.”
• ”It means you’re not the same.”

Then we used our ink and made our own prints.

We also examined them through the telescope to see all the lines and whirls better.

Next we learned about Sir Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and had a great time making our own phones.

We discovered that the string had to be pulled as tight as possible or the sound will not travel to the receiver. We experimented with different lengths of string and found the longer the piece, the better the sound.

Excellent work from our own little inventors!