Science


Our Super Senses!

This half term we have been learning about the different senses that we have and which body parts they relate to. We got to use our senses by touching, hearing, seeing, smelling and tasting things in the classroom!


Nature Journaling in Class 4

What a lovely sunny afternoon! The perfect day to get outside and enjoy the nature around us 🙂

Today, Georgina from the CDEC visited us to teach us about nature journaling. The first thing we needed to do was look very closely at the world around us. What kinds of biodiversity (different types of plants and animals) could we find?

We started with plants, finding all sorts of wildflowers and grasses in the green spaces near us – the community garden, the play park and the field. Then we had a look for living things – a wonderful variety of bugs, spiders and minibeasts.

Our task was to then look as closely as we could. What did we notice about their looks? Their smells? How they moved? We recorded these observations through drawing and writing, creating pages filled with our observations.

I certainly enjoyed myself – try it in a green space near you and see what you can find!


Fantastic farm visit.

Class Three enjoyed a visit to Heaves Farm last week. The weather was kind to us and we only got a little damp on our walk back to school! The children learnt all about the animals, welfare and feeding on our visit. We had chance to watch sheep shearing, a sheep dog demonstration, hold some chicks and taste some delicious eggy bread. Some of the children learnt about sorting sheep in a race and others learnt about how honey is collected and other fascinating bee facts. We all had a fabulous day, thank you to everyone at Heaves Farm and the Westmorland County Agricultural Society for organising the day.


Veterinary visit to Class One

Thank you so much to Megan, Isla’s Mummy, who came to talk to Nursery and Reception children today about her job as a veterinary nurse. The children were fascinated to explore and learn about her job and enjoyed getting immersed in some practical role-play activities which helped them to learn about x-rays, animal body language, medicines and bandaging.

 


Reception visit the butterfly house and beach

Reception had a wonderful time yesterday visiting the butterfly house in Williamson Park Lancaster and spending the afternoon on Arnside beach. We loved seeing all the different stages in the butterfly life cycle first-hand and were lucky enough to be able to see a beautiful atlas moth which had recently hatched. We met one of the resident tortoises and a terrapin and learned about their habitats and diets. The cave was also explored, where we could see stick insects, spiders and even an axolotl! The guinea pigs enjoyed a stroke by some of us and the meerkats were eager to meet us when they discovered we had tasty banana treats!

We enjoyed lunch in the sunshine before heading back to the bus for some time on the beach at Arnside. Ice creams were on the menu with the beautiful weather and we enjoyed digging in the sand, making ‘jelly mud pies’, mark-making and scavenger hunting.

A wonderful day was had by everyone!

 


Outdoor Science

Mr Dean set us the challenge of taking our Science ‘Electricity’ outdoors. So, Class Three rose to this challenge!

We used light meters to investigate where would be the best place to put solar panels. We really enjoyed discussing renewable energy and how we can reduce our electricity use. We then combined our results to find an average reading and discussed the lightest places.

 


Year 6 Light Up Science!

This week in Year 6, our budding scientists embarked on an electrifying experiment to investigate the relationship between bulbs and brightness in a circuit!

The challenge? To see how the number of bulbs in a circuit affects the overall brightness. Equipped with batteries, wires, and an assortment of circuit components, the students were eager to put their scientific thinking caps on.

Diligently following a scientific method, they meticulously constructed circuits with varying numbers of bulbs. With each creation, they carefully observed the level of brightness produced.

The results were illuminating (pun intended)! The students discovered that as the number of bulbs in the circuit increased, the overall brightness decreased. This is because the same amount of electrical energy is being shared amongst more bulbs, resulting in a dimmer glow for each.

But our young scientists weren’t done yet! They took their exploration a step further by creating a table to record their observations and drawing clear diagrams of their circuits. This meticulous documentation will be crucial when they come to write their scientific reports, explaining their findings and the scientific concepts behind them.


United Utilities Water Workshop

Recently, the whole school were treated to a visit from United Utilities who spent the day teaching us all about water. Where it comes from, where it goes, what we can do with it and, once all is said and done, where it ends up when we flush it down the drain!

We first learned about the water cycle – how heat from the sun evaporates water from the oceans, before this is deposited over land as precipitation (rain, snow or anything in between!) This water then makes its way through streams and rivers into reservoirs which store the water. From here, the water is processed and cleaned before being sent through pipes to our homes!

When we have used water (for washing up, having a bath or even going to the toilet!), it ends up in other pipes leading to a waste water treatment center. Here, the water is cleaned before being returned to a river or the sea to continue it’s journey through the cycle!

Not everything can be dealt with by the waste water treatment center though. We also learned how some items don’t break up when they are flushed down the toilet and can cause chaos in our sewers. Fat turns into icky fatbergs and wet-wipes don’t break down at all, blocking things up for everyone. Even the flushable ones – we learned about a test you can do at home to check!

Finally, we all learned about the importance of saving water. We studied many of the simple things we can do to save water and made a water saving promise to try and keep at home! All students have also received a small “shower timer” which ca be used to challenge us all to shower in four minutes or less to save water!


Marvellous Magnets

Class Three have had a fantastic time learning about forces and magnets. We started of the topic by looking at push and pull forces, moved on to exploring friction and then carried out experiments with magnets. We loved making magnets dance and making our own compasses. We looked at the poles and investigated which attracted and which repelled. We concluded the topic by designing and making our own magnetic games. Year Five came in to try them out and provide an opinion!

 

 

 


Splendid Sound!

Class Three have been very busy learning about sound. We have looked at a variety of musical instruments and identified how the sound was made. We now know all about vibrations! We used the drums and rice to investigate the link between the noise level and the vibrations. We concluded that the louder the noise the greater the vibrations. In computing we are learning how to use data loggers and this has proved very useful in our science lessons. We have investigated sound levels around school at different times of day and also in different locations. We discovered that Class Three was nearly the quietest place in school! We will continue with our sound topic and the next step is to learn about how we hear sounds. There are lots more experiments to come.