Profiles
How we earned our Discover Primary Science Award of Excellence:by Scoil Bhride, Mountnugent, Co Cavan
The boys and girls from fifth and sixth class and senior infants thrill us with tales of how they earned their Award of Science Excellence.
STEP ONE: Discover Primary Science classroom activities
We did a lot of activities in class from the DPS book, we did dancing raisins and the bubbles in the 7-Up made the raisins float. We also built magnetic cars and made them move by repelling and attracting magnets, one of which was attached to the car. We designed bridges and found the bridge built using folded paper and suspension at the bottom was strongest and held 32 coins! We dyed cloth with red cabbage and tested materials to see if they were acid or alkaline. We tested orange juice, soap, baking soda, vinegar and toothpaste. Acid turned the fabric pink and alkaline turned it turquoise, if they were neither it turned white. We made snakes from paper and hung them over the heater to make them move. We made circles from paper and coloured them the colours of the rainbow. When we spun them quickly they looked white.
Last year in junior infants, we planted tomato seeds in dirt, a yellow flower came on the plant and tomatoes grew from it. Some of our tomato plants are still growing, and are bigger than us now! The tomatoes grew so well one boy even brought his to a show and he won second prize!
STEP TWO: Invite a speaker, visit a Discovery Centre
A man visited our school and told us all about Lough Sheelin. He told us about insects and other wildlife there. We went there on a field trip and saw fish in a hatchery. We were able to examine the fry and release them. Only 1 out of ten will make it though.
STEP THREE: Displaying our work at a science event
We had an open day in our school where we set up the different activity tables and demonstrated our science work to all the other classes and some parents. It went down very well and was great fun.
STEP FOUR: Explorative activities
We went to Belfast as we were involved in the 'Sharing Science Across Ireland' Project. We visited a primary school and a College and saw lots of different experiments and one of the W5 Science Shows. Some of the things we did made quite a mess! We put vinegar and baking soda in a fruit juice bottle, put the top on tight and ran for our lives! It went everywhere.
We got our reward at the ceremony in Sligo and there was a bubble show. We had our photo taken and we brought the plaque back to our school where we hung it on the wall. We got t-shirts too, we are very proud of our award.
The children really enjoyed their science work and are looking for new ideas for this year!
In June 2006 we went to the Discovery Primary Science awards ceremony in Sligo because we did experiments like dyeing red cabbage, magnetic car, paper helicopter, dancing raisins, balancing clowns and spiral snakes. We left from the school at 9 o'clock and used the sat nav to find our way to the Radisson hotel. When we got there we looked at the experiments on display, filled ourselves with food and got green t-shirts. Some of the things they did were blowing up balloons with two different pumps, a display on the human body and a display on germs. We sat down and waited for the awards ceremony to start. When the show started, Leo Enright came and made a speech. Then a man came on and did a bubble show. He did loads of different things like filling bubbles with smoke and popping the tops of them and making all the smoke come out. After the bubble show Leo presented us with the plaque and we got our picture taken with one of the producers of scope. Then we went home (using the sat nav again) to the school. I really enjoyed it and I would love to go back next year.
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