We have advanced onto using Kinects for bridge building! P7 have tried to create a range of bridges to span the largest gap. We have suspension bridges, beam bridges with trusses and even cantilevers!

Who’s will span the furthest?

P7 are getting right into the spirit of saving the planet in the light of this year’s COP27. This week we are planning our upcycling project in preparation for making it next week. Perhaps an early Christmas present?

UNCRC Article 29

Last years COP 26 was a special one for us in the Glasgow area. This year it’s taking place in Egypt but it is just as important globally. To raise awareness, the children are going to create up cycled crafts  to show that we can reuse things that people usually throw out. Some people can even make a living from this! Who knows if we have any budding entrepreneurs in the P7!

This week we are starting off with a poster and a chat about what creations we could make in the following weeks.  (ARTICLE 4 and 28)

Continue reading COP 27 →

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at light and it’s properties. We are rounding up the topic with two activities.

1. Making a periscope. These were critical pieces of kit back in WW1 and WW2 to look over the trenches at the enemy. They use reflection to bounce the light to a level which keeps soldiers safe. The children used two mirrors and a cut out to create their own.

2. Making a UV light. The children created a UV light using blue/purple pen to cover their phone light. They then created patterns with highlighters and used their UV lights to make them glow in the dark. This shows that there are still wavelengths of light that are visible in UV light. Which highlighter colour glows the brightest?  (ARTICLE 28)

No it’s not quite Halloween yet but the children have been investigating shadows and why they are formed. We learned that it’s the absence of light due the source being blocked. We also learned that what we see is just the light bouncing of the item and into our eyes. We see colours as these are the wavelengths of light that are bouncing off the item and the rest is absorbed. The black card absorbs almost all the wavelengths of light.  (ARTICLE 28)

It’s the Battle of Britain!

Not really,  it’s just a Friday in Cross Arthurlie. The children were making spitfires by researching the colours of the planes and building them from green card.  (ARTICLE 28)

This weeks science involves the act of refraction. P7 have built on their knowledge of refraction and how light changes speed (and direction) as it goes into a more dense medium.

We shone our torches into water to observe the light being split into the different spectrum. P7s discovered that this happens when the different wavelengths of light change direction at different angles and we see the spectrum of light.

Finally we reverse the process by colouring in a wheel and spinning it to put the light back into white light.  (ARTICLE 28)

Magic mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?

Continuing with our theme of light, we are investigating the effects of reflection and refraction. Reflection is when light bounces off a surface at the same angle at which it arrived at the surface. These are called angle of incidence and angle of reflection.

Refraction happens when light passes through something more dense than air and slows down. This causes it to change direction. This is why things seem reversed or disjointed.

P7 drew diagrams of what they saw and next week we are onto rainbows!

All the hard work has finished. Now the big test; to see if our boats are sea worthy. P7 have tried their best to make the boats out of the most buoyant material and add buoyancy by trapping air inside them. We will test them initially to see if they float but then leave them for an extended period of time to find out if they are able to withstand the seven seas!

Let’s see how many are still buoyant tomorrow.

This week, the P7s have been building their boats which they designed. The theme of this experiment is buoyancy. We have learned that buoyancy is an upwards force which is the opposite of gravity. How buoyant something is is not to do with the weight of something, but how dense the material it is made of is.
With this experiment the children have been given a set range of materials and they have to build a vessel which is buoyant and can then hold a load.

Let’s see who can stay buoyant the longest!