This week in STEM club we have had a competition in who could launch the piece of paper the furthest. We made catapults from lollipop sticks, elastic bands and a milk bottle lid.
Monthly Archives: February 2020
Pancake Week!
This week, Class 5 didn’t have just a Pancake Day but we had a Pancake Week!!! We started the week with Pinaattiletut pancakes from Finland. At first, some of us were put off because they were green! This was the spinach and they actually tasted gorgeous.
Our next cooking session with Mrs Barnes was to make Korean Gamjajeon, which are potato pancakes with a soy sauce dip. We had to chop, mash, fry and combine several ingredients before making the pancake shapes.
Some of us then made Scotch pancakes, served with syrup or chocolate spread.
Finally, a group made French crepes, again served with syrup or chocolate spread.
Our official taster (Mrs Pearce) was very pleased with the standard of our pancake making!!!
We have been learning about Marco Polo and his journey along the Silk Road.
We found all the countries he visited on globes and in Atlases. We used Ipads to find pictures of the places he visited today and sketched pictures of the famous landmarks. 
Pancake Day in Reception
Today the children have celebrated ‘Shrove Tuesday’. The children began the day by sharing a story all about Pancake Day and learnt from the story the ingredients you need to make pancakes and how to make pancakes.
The children then went onto having the pictures from the story and they had to put them in the correct order to tell Miss Barber – how to make pancakes.
The children also made and ate pancakes – they were delicious!
Fitness Friday in Year 2
Fitness Friday- Year 1!
Today we completed fitness Friday! We spoke about the importance of staying fit and healthy and how we can do this at home and in school. Ministry of sport set up an obstacle course for us to complete with a mixture of stations. We had one minute to complete the station before we moved on. The obstacle course included star jumps, sit-ups and even weights! We were very tired afterwards.
Fitness Friday – Year 5 and 6
Today was Fitness Friday. Ministry of Sport set up circuit training with a variety of stations which exercised different parts of our body. The stations included: burpees, lunges, bench dipping, box jump, mountain climbing, sit-ups, ladder speed run and many more. Some were an awful lot harder than others!
STEM Club – Bridges
This week we looked at da Vinci’s self-supporting bridge. Using lollipop sticks and skewers we investigated how we could build a bridge without any glue of fixings. Our initial designs weren’t that successful. We then followed instructions to build a self-supporting bridge. It wasn’t easy – but we succeeded in the end!
STEM Club – Robots
Cesare successfully constructed a robot during STEM club. He used rulers, pencils, elastic bands, batteries, motors and a cotton real. His first design used just one motor and then he added another, however it worked better with only one motor. Click on the link to watch a video of it working.
Keeping Safe
Today we talked about materials that are used to keep us safe. We realised that some materials could be seen in the dark however in complete darkness they cannot be seen. We found out some light is needed to reflect the materials. We carried out investigations to find out how reflective different colours were. After this we made our own bike reflectors considering the properties they need: light, reflective and appropriately sized. 
Mayan chilli chicken
Wow! Who would of thought chilli and chicken could taste so good – another great recipe with Mrs Barnes.
Yum, yum, yum!
Share a Story Week!
This week Year 1 have been very lucky to have the Year 4 children come and share a story with us. The children have picked a story that they want to share with Year 1 and are doing a super job at reading to them!
Testing the effect different materials have on how far cars travel.
In Year 3 we have been very busy looking at forces. We wanted to test whether different materials affected how far cars would travel.
We used 7 different materials; tinfoil, bubble wrap, wood, foam, corrugated card, sand paper and felt. We talked about how to ensure it was a fair test we would use the same height of ramp, the same car and the same person doing each job. Before we carried out the investigation we made a prediction about which material we thought the car would travel furthest on.
We had 6 groups and each group tested the ramp once. We combined these results to find out the overall result.
We had great fun and used lots of scientific language.
Visit from Al Sylvester
Today we were visited by Al Sylvester MBE. He shared with us his tale of leading the RAF’s first unsupported attempt on the Geographic South Pole across Antarctica. He told us about the 3-year build-up of selecting and training a team, raising the funds, choosing the logistics and his experience of living on Antarctica for 7 weeks in a tent. He explained how the simplest of tasks become complex a polar desert and what you can and cannot leave on Antarctica. We learnt about how sometimes things don’t go to plan and that determination and resilience are key to success. Living in extreme cold conditions, meant that specialist clothing was required. Jayden was given the opportunity to dress like an explorer. We learnt so much from Al and his expedition.
Volcanic eruption
On the last day of baking with Mrs Barnes instead of making biscuits we used our skills to create a 3D volcano, we used a coke bottle, tin foil, various colours of fondant and mentos.
We created two volcanoes and took them outside, we added the mentos and saw the reaction that was created.
Why does the explosion happen?
Although there are a few different theories around about how this experiment works, the most favoured reason is because of the combination of carbon dioxide in the Diet Coke and the little dimples found on Mentos candy pieces.
The thing that makes soda drinks bubbly is the carbon dioxide that is pumped in when they bottle the drink at the factory. It doesn’t get released from the liquid until you pour it into a glass and drink it, some also gets released when you open the lid. This means that there is a whole lot of carbon dioxide gas just waiting to escape the liquid in the form of bubbles.
Unfortunately our explosion didn’t beat the record of 9 metres but we still had fun.
