science – P4.14 Blog 2023/24

STEM Week 2022

Last week we took part in British Science Week by completing a range of virtual visits, challenges and activities.

On Monday we were given a tour of a farm by Farmer Catriona who has a farm on the other side of Glasgow. She showed us her sheep, some horses, her barns and some of the machines that she uses to help her harvest her own hay. At the end we were able to ask her some questions.

On Tuesday we had a virtual visit from Mr Balfour who is a dentist in Kilmarnock. He explained how important it is to look after our teeth. He shared with us the different parts of his job in which he uses Science and Technology. Mr Balfour managed to answer many questions from Primary 2 some were quite tricky!

We took part in two STEM challenges. The first one required us to build a tower using recycled magazines and cellotape. We worked in teams to build towers that could stand on their own and hold 2 small blocks.

Here are some of our structures. All of the towers were able to hold the bricks for at least 5 seconds.

Our second challenge was to create a parachute using either, part of a plastic bag, a paper towel or a page from a magazine and string and cellotape. The parachute has to hold a small block.

We tested our parachutes by launching them over the balcony in the street area of the school. Mrs James ensured that a safe zone was established before the launch!

“The Home of Wild Life, our Outdoor Adventure”

On Monday we spent most of the day outside. It wasn’t too cold and we had great fun. We even enjoyed some sunshine in the afternoon.

Here are some of the children’s comments

“We were making tents.” – R

“We went on a bear hunt!” – B

“We were doing some calculations with leaves.” – C

“We did activities like making crafts and doing maths.” – O

“We were even making crafts, little houses and doing maths.” – U

“We (they) made dens, we used kind of cover things (tarps) string and pegs to attach it to the trees.” O

“So we sat on a sleeping bag in our den, we talked, we chattered and chattered all day and we have so much fun.” – J

“We made houses for our little buddies. With my friends we added little beds for them.” – M

“We collected leaves and sticks and we were even using some mud to stick it together to make some little houses with them.” – U

“We made a big house.” – A

Snapshot

Here is a snapshot from this week. We have been investigating Autumn leaves, acorns and conkers in the tough tray, trying to use these loose parts to make pictures and symmetrical patterns.

We used small pumpkins to work on our fine motor skills using elastic bands. This then helps use with our handwriting.

We used natural letter slices to make words as well as some of our new wooden magnetic letters.

This week a few soft toy patients arrived at our doctor’s surgery which required our doctor’s to write prescriptions for the medicine that they need so that they feel better.

Here is a photo of some of us working at the teaching table. We were carrying out a writing task related to our focus on COP26.

Plant Experiment – results

A month ago we planted broad beans. We planted one bean each and also 3 extra beans.

Bean 1 – we did not water……the bean did not grow

Bean 2 – we planted without soil……the bean started to grow a root and a shoot. It had two leaves

Bean 3 – we kept in the dark……the bean did not grow

Half of our beans did not grow, the other half grew well and this week we were able to measure how tall they were. We worked in pairs to measure the height using cubes.

We created a bar chart showing the height of each plant. The tallest plant was 29 cubes tall and the smallest was 5 cubes high.

Our plants were very fragile so we carefully took them home to continue growing.

Planting Beans

We enjoyed reading the book ‘Growing Good’ by Bernard Ashley and Anne Wilson. The characters in the story use some land opposite their house that has recently been cleared of a factory to plant fruit and vegetables. The neighbours argued saying they wanted a car park to be built.

We discussed land use and how planting fruit and vegetables is a good use of the space and that the community all enjoyed growing their own food and eating it.

It was suggested that we plant something. Therefore we planted broad beans.

As scientists we decided to put some of the beans in different conditions to grow.

one bean has no water
one bean has been placed in the dark
another bean has been planted without soil

Here are some photos of us planting them and how they are growing so far.