Today we have been really enjoying a visit from Chris. He’s an astronomer and has been teaching us about stars, planets, moons and our solar system!
We’ve been using technology to learn more about each planet in our solar system, made scale models of our solar system using playdough, learnt more about the night sky and the star consellations we can see and P4-7 have been doing some work using robotic telescopes!
Here are some pictures of a great day full of learning!
On Wednesday we hosted our first transition day for all of the p.7s. We did lots of activities to get to know each other better. First we played ice breaker bingo, we had to go around everyone and ask them questions. Then we got put into our groups. We had to come up with a team name and a chant to present to everyone else. We then had to create a team flag. By then it was snack time and we all played together. When we came back we had another activity that involved putting pictures of Mid Yell school staff on a poster so that we were familiar with them. After that the teachers revealed the project we would be working on over the next few months. Throughout the day we had visits from Mrs. Tulloch, Mr. Anderson and Ms. Hart who told us more about secondary and about the subjects they teach. We had a fun day!
Wow, what a day we have had at the Cullivoe Primary School!
Ruby and Poppy were in charge of taking note of how long we danced for each song and counted this up to give us a total of 77 minutes and 48 seconds danced through the course of the day!
We raised £45 from selling badges and £351 from people sponsoring us to do our Just Dance which brings our total to £396 which Miss Nicholson then rounded up to £400!
We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that sponsored us, all the pupils and staff for their enthusiasm when dancing and giving it their all and a big thank you to primary 7 who organised this all!
£400 will be on its way to Children In Need thanks to everyone at the Cullivoe Primary School!
Today we are raising money for Children In Need by doing a sponsored Just Dance. We have cleared the classroom and are ready to go when the whistle blows. (This is when we all have to stop what we are working on and go into the downstairs classroom and keep dancing until the second whistle blows, then we have to return back to our work)
Primary 7 have organsied everything. They have made a list of songs they want to dance to so Miss Nicholson has loaded them on the laptop so we just have to press play. They have also sorted everyone into groups so after music we will all have different stations to move around:
They have also ordered pudsey padges and are selling them for £1.
We will keep you posted on how the day is going and how much we raise!!
Today we looked at the human digestive system. We watched a short animation that helped us see how food travels through you body and what it does. We then had a sheet where we had to label the organs/parts of the digestive system.
Then we undertook an experiment to help us understand it.
In our pairs we started off with a plastic cup and fork. Miss Nicholson gave us food to mash. The fork demonstrated how teeth grinds up the food in the mouth. We were given banana, coco pops, cracker, crisps and sweetcorn. We mashed this all up then added water to represent the saliva. Saliva is a special chemical called enzymes which do the real work of breaking up the food and lubricates it so that it can be swallowed.
Once we made this watery past we swallowed the food down our esophagus (food tube) by emptying the cup into a sealed bag which was our stomach. Miss Nicholson came around with vinegar which was the stomach acid and we mashed our food some more to show the muscular contractions churning the food and mixing it with the digestive juices. Did you know that food can remain in the stomach for 3-4 hours.
After this process we emptied the contents of our stomach into a pair of tights, this represented our intestines. Digestion takes place in the small intestines. We showed this by squeezing the tights which took all the juices out. This was the nutrients we need for growth and energy leaving the intestines and flowing into the body. Food can be in the small intestines for 3 hours.
The food that we cannot digest along with bacteria turns into waste and passses into the large intestines, this was what was left at the bottom of the tights. The large intestines reabsorbs water in the blood and forms solid faeces. This can stay here for 18 hours upto 2 days! The waste is stored in the rectum until it is passed out of the body.
Did you know in your lifetime, your digestive system may have to process 50 tonnes of food! Now that’s a lot of food!!
On Tuesday we were learning the importance of hand washing and how to describe that germs may be present even if they are not seen.
Whatever we do, we come into contact with germs. It’s easy for a germ on your hand to end up in your mouth.Washing your hands is the best way to stop germs from spreading.
We think some of the best times to wash your hands are:
We undertook an experiment to show the importance of why we should wash our hands. Here is the steps for this experiment:
The glitter was acting the same way that the germs on our hands act. There are a lot of germs, they spread around easily, and it can be hard to get them off. The difference between the glitter and germs is that germs are so small you can’t see them without a microscope. You have to know when you may have come into contact with germs and then wash your hands.
If we accidently touched our mouth, nose, or eyes while doing this experiment, we may have found glitter getting left behind. Germs travel the same way and can easily enter our body if we touch our face with dirty hands and germs can make us sick. That’s why it’s important to wash our hands before we eat. It is also important to wash our hands after touching something that might have germs, such as when we use the bathroom or play outside. If we don’t, the germs can easily spread to more places and to other people and cause sickness.
This year we wanted to make an even bigger and better cake for the Yell Show! We decided to make the show field – yes we were ambitious…but it paid off because we got first prize for our outstanding cake!!
It took a whole week to prepare and a very busy day on Friday for us all to put all the cake together. I think you will agree that all our hard work had was worth it though.
We had lots of ideas of what we could do. We really thought about the little details like bunting, the bouncy castle, the barrels, etc. We came up with some really ceative ideas as to how to make each part of the cake. We decided the hall, 3 sheds and Hendersons ‘fish and chip’ truck would be made out of cake. Ice cream wafers would be the slates/sheets for the roofs. The cars would be moulded from marshmallow Krispies, the bouncy castle would be made of flumps, the animals with regal icing, the barrels out of marshmallows dipped in blue food colouring, pens out of either curly wurlys, chocolate fingers, matchmakers or KitKat fingers – the different pens for different animals would be different and bunting made with skewers, string and small triangles cut out of coloured paper.
We had to follow a recipe to bake the cakes. We used a big tray for the hall (which we would be cut in half and put on top of each other) the sheds we decided to use a loaf tins as this would be a good shape.
We had to make a plan of the show field so we knew where we wanted to put everything and what size we would need everything to be.
We made the cows, dogs and ponies out of regal icing and then used icing pens to put colour onto them. We thought the primary ones could make the sheep out of cakes, and mini marshmallows.
We made Marshmallow Krispies and moulded them into the shape of cars, the ice cream van and a tractor and then decorate them.
We crushed chocolate biscuits to make gravel for the car park. We also crushed Oreos to make earth for the pens.
Primary 7 made the bouncy castle out of flumps.
Once we assembled the cakes we had to ice them. We spread jam on the cake to help the icing stick and then we made the roofs. We made butter icing so we could get the waffers to stay on the roof.
We spread jam on the bottom of the cake so that the gravel would stick and not all fall off when transporting the cake. We also rolled out green icing so that we could make this grass for the horses pen.
We used the rest of the butter icing to spread over the remaining cake so that we could cover this in the crushed oreos for the earth.
Then it was time to put the blue barrels on and tie string around it to look like the rope.
Our cake was then finished!
We really enjoyed making this cake!
On Monday primary 4-7 undertook various experiments about ‘changes’ as this is our topic this term. Here are some of our experiments:
We have placed a white flower into water, with food colouring added in, to see if this changes the colour of the petals. Flowers absorb water through the xylem, which is a tissue of thin tubes found inside the stem. Water is transported to the various parts of the plant including the flower. Because the water is coloured the petals should then take on the colour.
It has been 2 days and the flower in the green water has begun to turn green but there isn’t much change with the other flowers yet. Some of us thought the flower would change within: 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day but we were all wrong with our hypothesis.
We split the stem of a rose into 3 and placed each of these in a different colour, red, blue and yellow, to see if this will give us a rainbow rose.
This hasn’t really changed yet but we know with the other flowers that it could take a while.
We placed eggs into different liquids to see if/how this changes the egg. We have one in water as a control, one is in coke, another in vinegar and the last in fresh orange juice. We discussed our hypothesis on what we thought would happen to each egg:
As soon as we put the egg in the vinegar it started to react by producing lots of bubbles, this is because the calcium carbonate in the shell is dissolved by the acetic acid producing carbon dioxide.
We checked the eggs after 1 day and there were slight changes:
We checked the eggs again today and it was very interesting:
Below are close ups of the control, orange juice and coke
As you can see the egg in the vinegar is much bigger than the control egg in the water. This is because the membrane around the egg is semi permeable. Whilst it was in the vinegar the liquid moved through the membrane into the egg resulting in the membrane swelling and increasing in size.
We tested how well the vinegar egg could bounce. It bounced from 10cm high so we went up to 20cm and it still bounced so we tried dropping it from 30cm…it didn’t bounce though.
We poured milk into a glass and added red bull. When we discussed what we thought would happen there were a few different thoughts:
You can just about see from the photo there is a layer at the top of the glass. After 5 minutes of pouring in the red bull the acid in the Red Bull causes the protein in the milk to separate. When the milk curdles, a chemical reaction takes place resulting in a precipitate.
We did one more experiment with milk. We placed enough milk on a plate to cover the bottom. Then we poured drops of food colouring into the milk but nothing happened. We then took a cocktail stick and placed one end in fairy liquid before placing this into the milk and food colouring. What happened next was really cool.
The colours began to spread away from the fairy liquid and began mixing together. This is because fat and protein molecules in the milk are altered by the soap. These fat and proteins are super sensitive to change in the milk so when the fairy liquid is added it creates a chemical reaction and causes them to roll around. Once the soap molecules have mixed evenly with the fat and protein molecules the motion stops so we added more fairy liquid to keep the action moving. The food colouring helps us to see this change.
We have all got our red noses on for Red Nose Day! We also decided to dress in red which was easy for us as our school uniform is red! We are busy getting ready for our coffee morning just now.
James has set us a challenge of keeping on our noses all day without taking them off. We agreed that you could take them off when eating or drinking but he thinks he will manage to keep his on during snack and lunch. Wish us luck!
Primary 1-4 experimented with coins last term, we used old coins that Miss Nicholson brought in and put them into different liquids to see which would clean the coins the best.
We had water, fairy liquid, fairy liquid with water, orange juice, lemon juice, coke, vinegar, vinegar and salt, baking powder and water, bicarbonate of soda and water. The vinegar made our classroom stink but it really cleaned the coins, a little too much as it stripped the colour from the coins. The water didn’t really do anything to the coin, the fairy liquid with and without water cleaned it a little but not too much, the coin in the orange juice was surprisingly clean! The lemon juice worked a little, the coke worked really well! We wondered what it does to your insides when you drink it if it could cleaned really dirty coins that well! The baking powder and bicarbonate of soda worked a little too. After a unanimous vote we decided that coke is the best thing to use when cleaning coke so we used this for cleaning the rest of the coins.
Primary 1-4
