On Friday when we came into school and Miss McLean put us into groups from 1 to 11. Then we went to the Atrium, where we were told how to make a rocket mouse. After that we were shown to our tables and met lots of other children. Parents were there too!

We had a time limit to make our own rocket mice – 25 minutes. After that we had two heats to see which mouse would fly ( with the help of some empty milk cartons ) the highest.

Each group came out individually to set their mice off. The person who’s mouse flew the highest went into the final heat- the final!

Two people got into the last heat from our class- Keira and Sofia. Unfortunately they did not win.  We had a class competition for the best design. Sean won!

When we came back, we learned about how aeroplanes fly.  They fly using four forces – thrust, weight, lift and drag. The wings being curved on an aeroplane causes the force lift.

We made two paper aeroplanes next.  We had to make one that would fly far and one that would stay in the air for a long time.  We had to test our aeroplanes in the class and we were allowed to try and improve them if we could.

We had a competition on the pitch.  Keira’s went the furthest and Lucie’s stayed in the air for the longest time.

After lunch, we made cress heads.  First we had to put a pair of tights over a cup and fill the tights with cress seeds and soil.  Sometimes Miss McLean forgot about the cress! Oops!  Then we tied the ends of the tights and made a nose on our head.  We have taken the cress heads home, and when the seed germinates, we have to cut a hole in the tights so the cress can grow.

We loved STEM week and are sad that it is over.  We hope we get to do it again next year.

On Wednesday we learned about renewable and non renewable energy.

Energy is what powers things up.  We use energy to keep our food cool in the fridge, to drive our vehicles, to use our computers, to watch TV and to switch on our lights.  We use energy every day for lots of reasons.

Renewable energy is energy that will last as long as the Earth does.  Types of renewable energy are water, wind and sunshine.

Non-renewable energy is energy that will eventually run out.  Types of non-renewable energy are petrol, coal and natural gas.

We looked at Wind Power.  We get wind power from wind turbines.  Wind turbines are now built in wind farms on land and more recently have been built in the sea.  The wind makes the blades of the wind turbine spin round.  When the blades move, it turns a generator through a drive shaft which creates electricity.  All of the wind turbines in the farm are connected so they all move together.

We made our own windmills from paper, a stick, a butterfly clip, Sellotape and a juice straw.  It was quite tricky to work out how we could get the blades to spin, but eventually (when the orange juice arrived from the kitchen) we found a solution.  Some of them weren’t as spinny as we would like them to be, so we talked about the space between the clip and the straw.  We would need to make the hole bigger for the windmill to turn quickly.

Here’s a photo of some of us, and our windmills.

In the afternoon, Mr Adams visited our class.  Mr Adams is a doctor who mainly looks after babies, but sometimes children too.  He works for the NHS.  He works in a hospital in Kilmarnock.  He talked about how to be healthy by keeping fit, drinking water and eating a balanced diet.  Mr Adams said the best water for you is tap water because it’s fresh.  We thought that was quite interesting.  He also told us about the most common accident in the hospital, which is falling off a trampoline.  We all will be very careful on trampolines in the future! We were interested in what bone is the easiest to break, and Mr Adams told us it is the collarbone.  He told us the most common bone broken in one in your arm.  We really liked having Mr Adams in and asking him questions.  It was very, very, very interesting!

This morning we learned about chemical reactions.  Chemical reactions are when two substances mix together to create a different substance.  The colour, the shape or the flexibility of the substance could change or the substances could explode!

We made lots of chemical reactions happen in class. We went outside and put mentos into diet coke.  When the mentos went in, the diet coke fizzed up and went over the top of the bottle!

We put milk into a bowl.  Then we put food colouring in the middle of the milk.  The food colouring stayed in the middle in a little blob.  Next we added a drop of Fairy Liquid.  When we added this, the food colouring spread out all over the milk.  After that we tried it with red food colouring, and with both red and blue food colouring, but nothing worked as well as just plain blue.

 

 

We put red food colouring and bicarbonate of soda into a bottle.  Then we added vinegar.  When the vinegar went into the bottle, it started to bubble up.  Miss McLean put more vinegar in so it kept bubbling up.

We thought about chemical reactions that happen all the time like when we use soap in the bath or shower, fire, water, salt, rust, photosynthesis, batteries and digestion.

After break, we were set a challenge.  The challenge was to build a bridge using Knex.  We had certain rules to follow.  We only had an hour, the bridge had to support it’s own weight and the bridge had to be at least 30cm long.

Before we started the challenge, we looked at some bridges in real life.  We could see that the bridges used lots of triangle shapes.  Miss McLean told us that this is because triangles are a very strong shape.

We worked in pairs or threes to create our bridge.  Once we were done, we all voted for the bridge we thought was the best/strongest.  The bridge that won was designed by Keira, Greta and Katie.  They all won lots of house points!

 

 

After lunch we went to the atrium and a man called Ross from Glasgow Science Centre came to talk to us about Oxygen.  We learned that you wouldn’t be able to survive without it.  Your nose is the first thing that takes in oxygen.  The hairs in your nose, bogeys and sneezing stop dust coming up your nose so that you only breathe in what you need.  We also learned that the heart beats 100 times in a minute, and goes faster if you are doing any exercise or sport.  The left side of your heart is stronger because it has to pump blood all the way around your body, but the right side just pumps to your lungs.  We know where the lungs are on our body because we had to stick them on a Velcro vest that Greta was wearing. We also learned about the veins and the arteries.  Iona had to crawl through tubes which represented the veins and arteries carrying balloons, which represented oxygen.  She gave the balloons to the muscles, because this is where oxygen goes when we breathe it in. Iona had to be careful because some of the balloons represented gas which we do not want to go to our muscles.  At the end, we breathe these gases out.  Iona let go off the balloons so they flew away like the gas does.

 

 

We loved today because we got to do some experiments, we learnt more about our body and we had fun!

Written by Lily and Sofia (with a little bit of help from Miss McLean) and checked and confirmed by p3a.