Fin-tastic skeletons!

Science
Today in topic we took matters (aka fish) into our own hands and investigated different types of skeletons. To do this we had to be very so-fish-ticated and thorough with our examinations. Using trays filled with a variety of ocean life (octopus, crab, mackerel and tiger prawns) we were able to feel our way around the variety of skeletons before us. 

We can o-fish-ally say that we understand the differences between endoskeletons, exoskeletons and hydrostatic skeletons now!

• Endoskeleton - skeleton on the inside (squishy outside but hard inside)
• Exoskeleton - skeleton on the outside (hard outside but squishy inside)
• Hydrostatic - no skeleton but moves using muscle contractions (squishy all over)

Whilst some of us were a bit sceptical at first, we realised we had to stop trouting ourselves as any fin is possible when we have the confidence to give it a go! 

Fun task: How many puns can you find in this post? There's at least seven, I'm not squidding! 

If you can think of better fish puns, let minnow!

 

Now that's what I call mud!

Science

Today in science we have continued our topic understanding of rocks and begun to explore soil. We were put to the test when we had to guess what the lesson would be about through a range of clues such as: 

• Is precious to all life on Earth
• One handful is filled with more life than every person on the planet
• Consists of different layers including water, rocks and air

Once we had figured out that we were learning about rocks, we created a variety of different hand actions to help us remember the key information about soil. This helped to prepare us for our science investigation where we each had a cupful of soil that we explored with gloves, spoons and a magnifying glass. We found a range of different things like: insects, stones, plants, shells, plastic and of course top soil!

We had a great afternoon investigating and loved the chance to get our hands dirty. We even got a chance to unveil our fossils! Excellent work everyone.

 

Year 5 exploring materials

 Today in year 5, we explored and identified materials used in our school. We used our scientific knowledge to understand the properties of materials and why these are relevant for certain objects. For example, the school has windows made out of glass. This is a really good material to use because it is transparent and allows light to be let into rooms. 

Year 1’s RE and investigation work

The children have been learning about Sukkot in RE - a Jewish festival, held in the Autumn. After hearing about how people celebrate within a special ‘sukkah’, the children helped to design their own sukkah shelter.

The children have also been investigating how to get leaves out of frozen blocks of ice. During the children’s child initiated time this week, some children have been attempting to release the leaves and discussing how best to get them out! They tried warming up the blocks with their hands, pouring water over them and even just chipping away at them with cutlery!

How clean are your hands?

As part of Year 2's Science topic, we have been learning about personal hygiene. We’ve discussed all the ways we can stay clean and healthy, such as brushing our teeth, showering and washing our hands.

But, we wanted to find out how important it actually was to wash your hands.

Does washing your hands really reduce the amount of bacteria on them?

Warhol and Kusama Class decided to investigate….

We started with three slices of bread.

The first slice of bread was our control slice. We placed the bread inside a ziplock bag. We did not touch the bread with our hands.

We passed around a second piece of bread with our dirty hands and put it into a ziplock bag.

We washed our hands with soap and warm water to get rid of the bacteria and germs. (We remembered to sing Happy Birthday twice to check we had washed them for long enough).  We then passed around a piece of bread with our clean hands and put it into our ziplock bag.

We put a damp paper towel into each ziplock bag because we know that bacteria grows in warm, damp conditions.

We then wrote our predictions.

“I predict that the dirty hands one will go the mouldiest because the whole class touched the bread with dirty hands.” 

“I predict that the dirty hands bread will go mouldy in one day. The clean hands bread will go mouldy in 3 days and the control bread will go mouldy in a month because it has no bacteria on.” 

A week later, we looked closely at the bread and gathered our results. We couldn’t believe how much mould had grown on the ‘dirty hands’ slice in a week! Yuck! 

We concluded that it IS very important to wash our hands, especially before eating!