Tag Archives: #citizenscience

Pumpkin Science with Santa the Panda

We decided to show Santa a pumpkin today because it is Halloween tomorrow.

We passed the pumpkin around our circle and all gave an adjective to describe what the pumpkin looked or felt like.

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After that, Miss Yarrow revealed a tub of water and said that we were going to do some pumpkin science as well. She asked us to predict if we thought the pumpkin would float or sink? Most of us thought the pumpkin would float. We tested to see if our predictions were accurate; the pumpkin bobbed on the top of the water, which meant that it was floating! (If it had sunk, it would have dropped to the bottom of the basin). Miss Yarrow told us that there was a scientific word for floating and that word is buoyancy and we can say that things are more or less dense than other things. So, instead of saying that the pumpkin floated in the water, we could say that the pumpkin was buoyant  in or less dense than water.

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We discussed why this might be the case. One of us suggested that its because there isn’t ‘stuff’ filling up the inside and that there’s space in it. Miss Yarrow explained that was in fact correct, and that because pumpkins are hollow, they have air in them, which makes them float/less dense. It didn’t matter that the pumpkin felt heavy to us (boats are heavy but they float in the ocean).

Next, Miss Yarrow asked us to ‘gut’ our pumpkin. We loved getting messy and taking the pumpkins insides, out. We got rid of the flesh and kept the seeds for our next experiment. We made new predictions about whether the  seeds would be more or less dense than water. This time, most of us thought they would be more dense and that they would sink. We believed this because we thought that the insides were full up this time and not hollow. However, when we tested them, they all stayed floating on the surface too.

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We each took a pumpkin seed home with us to remind us of today’s learning.

Santa was impressed with our topical science. He learned a lot about pumpkins and buoyancy!

Santa comes Mini-beast hunting

As a class we decided that this term, we wanted to find out about living things in our environment .

This week our learning focus is ‘Mini-beasts’.  We decided that we could go outdoors to see what mini-beasts had habitats within the school grounds. Before going on our mini-beat hunt, we watched some clips on youtube and found out about the different families of mini-beasts. We learned that mini-beasts with 0 legs are called Annelids or Molluscs, ones with 6 legs are known as Insects, ones with a protective shell or different segments of body are called Crustaceans, mini-beasts with 8 legs are known as Arachnids and ones with too many legs to count are called Myriapods. These are tricky words to remember but we liked learning the real terms for the different invertebrate families and we had fun learning the words with Santa.

DSCN0213DSCN0211We made predictions about what mini-beasts we thought we would see on our hunt. Santa also though that we might find a centipede!Rachael's predictionBefore we went outside, we got our clipboards and checklists ready so that we could record our results. We also took the key that Miss Yarrow had shown us, so that we could identify what mini-beasts we found. The key came from OPAL who provide citizen science resources. We might choose to send our results off to OPAL so that scientists can see what we discovered about mini-beasts in Sauchie.

We searched 3 different areas of the school grounds:

1. bushes and dry ground- here we found ants, beetles, flies and a worm

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2. edge of the woods- here we found a snail shell (with no snail inside), a worm, a beetle and a golf ball 😉 Santa especially liked the huge worm!

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Santa helped us check the key to help as identify and classify the mini-beasts. DSCN0224 DSCN0225 DSCN0226 DSCN0227

^Some of us were less keen on the worm than others!^

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3. long, damp grass/undergrowth- here we found 2 spiders, a slug, a tiny snail and another beetle

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Unfortunately, we didn’t find as many mini-beasts as we thought we would find. We had a discussion when we went back to class about why this might have been the case. Some of us thought that maybe it wasn’t hot or sunny enough, some thought that it maybe wasn’t damp enough on the ground and others thought that we weren’t looking in the right habitats. We will hopefully get to take Santa out again to see if we can show him some of the other mini-beasts that live in our country. This time, not all of our predictions weren’t right but we had fun having a go at guessing anyway!

Primary engineers at Middleton Park

Primary 6 and Pasu the Panda invited Ian the engineer from Subsea Seven to teach us more about engineering and using materials. We experimented, worked in teams and perserved when things got tough. We used trial and error and made adjustments to our designs.

We all made tanks using our knowledge and understanding.

A full report from our ‘Primary Engineers’ coming soon…

 

A special visitor arrives at St. Catherine’s Primary!

Wednesday 23rd April 2015

Primary 3 in St Catherine’s had a special delivery, we were curious to see what was inside.

We were surprised at the arrival and so excited to teach the panda. We decided to call the panda Fluffy Chi Chi. We have been taking it in turns to take Fluffy on an adventure and he even came to make his First Holy Communion on Saturday

Fluffy Chi Chi helped us to collect worms as part of an OPAL survey and we created out own worm world.

Fluffy Chi Chi is having so much fun and been to lots of parties.

Panda Reporter travels Scotland!

Hi everyone! I’ve just arrived at Queen Street in station. It’s very early and there weren’t many people around… but I did see a fox running across George Square. He didn’t want to chat and seemed in a hurry though!

The first train goes to a place called Oban so I think I’ll head there and find out about the environment and conservation up there.

– Panda Reporter
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Hunting for bugs at Doune Nursery!

Doune bugsAfter a very tight contest Bugs won our nursery vote about what Opal survey we would like to take part in. So today Amy and Scott from Opal came to help us learn more about bugs. The children asked questions and shared their previous knowledge of bugs with Amy and Scott. Amy then took us on a bug hunt in the garden where we danced like penguins to bring the worms to the surface. doune bugs 4  We found worms. slugs, slug eggs and spiders. And despite the terrible rain it was lots of fun. doune bugs 3One child said “I found slugs. I liked it because I touched the slug, it was a big one it always stuck to me.”

Panda travels!

science centre koreaPatrick the Panda had a great time today at Seoul’s massive science centre. He learned lots about how science had helped people all over the world and how it could help solve problems.

He learned about wind power and how it can be used to make renewable energy. He also met the inventor of an electric kit car. Electric cars can be powered by renewable energy and can help tackle climate change. This is because they don’t produce ‎as many greenhouse gases as cars that are powered by fossil fuels. The inventor hopes his electric kit car will become popular in Korea. He made it himself in the science centre’s make lab.electric car

Patrick went all panda-eyed when he saw this man zipping about in Seoul. H‎e thinks was an in line skate. He’d never seen it before but if people left their cars behind and used this to travel short distances then it could also reduce emissions. Walking would be even better but Patrick is a bit of lazy Panda at times!

A scientist came to Doune!

doune 10A scientific visitor came to nursery. Amy Styles the OPAL scientist came to Doune to support our role of citizen scientists and to meet Lighting the Panda. She talked to the children about different projects the children could get involved with locally. We can choose between water, soil, mini beasts, trees and air. We are going to vote to decide which project we would follow. We are looking forward to her coming back in March.