St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Senior Infants have been busy exploring and investigating different materials. We have looked at metal, wood, plastic, fabric, cardboard and rubber and have learned that they all look and feel very different. We decided that it would be fun to explore which of these materials are waterproof.

Ned, Seán and Damiano investigated wood and metal that they found on an abacus in our classroom. They said that the metal felt cold and hard and that the wood felt smooth and strong.

David and Ellie investigated fabric and said that it felt soft and fluffy!

First we decided to talk about what the word ‘waterproof’ really means. Seán explained that a material that is waterproof does not let water go through it. Haylie explained that lots of our jackets are waterproof so that when it rains we don’t get wet.

To begin our experiment we recorded our predictions. We did this by counting how many people in our class guessed that certain materials are waterproof. We wondered how many of our predictions would be correct!

We counted how many people in our class predicted that these materials would be waterproof.

Then the experimenting began! We organised a big basin of water in the classroom to place the different materials in to test whether or not they are waterproof. We thought that this part of our investigation was great fun! Each person from our class tested at least one material. We tested tissue, plastic, kitchen roll, cardboard, fabric, rubber and wood.

It was interesting to see what happened to each material as it was placed in the water.

David and Ned tested some kitchen roll.

We were excited to see what would happen the fabric in the water!

Our class prediction was correct – tissue is not waterproof!

Ellie testing the rubber gloves!

To make sure we didn’t forget which materials were waterproof we recorded our results on this chart – it was very helpful!

Recording our results.

We were glad to see that we correctly predicted that rubber and plastic are waterproof!

We were really pleased our experiment had worked so well and decided to use what we had learned to design a new rain coat for our friend ‘Moo’ in Senior Infants – he helps us with our Gaeilge! 🙂

We worked on lots of different designs before deciding what material we should use.

We used our drawings to help plan our design.

We voted to use rubber to design this coat because we knew it would keep Moo dry. We cut up some bright yellow rubber gloves and used staples and a big blue button to finish our design. We tested the rain coat to make sure that it would keep Moo dry by sprinkling some water on him! Luckily he didn’t mind 🙂
The best part was he stayed dry and now he has a very cool new coat to wear!

Testing out Moo’s newly designed rain coat – made from rubber!

Hurrah! Our experiment was great fun to carry out and now Moo has a new rain coat to wear!