Year 4 have been experimenting curtains today.

The children were given a scenario;

‘In the summer the sun rises before I need to get up. The light from the window wakes me up and I can’t get back to sleep. I want to buy some new curtains to block out the sunlight, can you help me to decide which fabric will be best?’

The children used the bear cave to explore three different fabrics. They had a white fabric, a purple thicker fabric and a black fabric that was even thicker. They found out some new tricky words, transparent, translucent and opaque and the meaning of them

– Transparent materials let light travel through them in straight lines.

– Translucent materials let some light through, but they scatter light in all different directions.

– Opaque materials do no let any light travel through them.

The children used torches to shine through the different materials and found out that the black material was the most suitable as it didn’t let any light through.

The children wrote these down and then made posters to advertise the blackout curtains based on the experiment. The children had great fun doing this as they included their scientific facts within the posters.

It is safe to safe we are enjoying science week.