St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Our title was ‘Rollercoaster on a poster’ and our question was ‘what effect does the surface have on how far a KNEX car travels?’

We found out that tinfoil was the smoothest surface so it helped the car to travel faster. We timed it by using a stopwatch. There was very little friction between the tinfoil and the KNEX wheel, so there was nothing to slow it down.

Our favourite part was Ameesh’s victory dance. We liked building our KNEX structure with Mr Kinsella. It was easy to explain our project to the judge and she gave us a good comment.

Thanks for reading about our project.

AaronJ, Ameesh, Andrei, LukeMc

Welcome to a brand new year of Wednesday for Parents!

It seems fitting to start the year with a post on resolutions – digital resolutions! I found this post over the holidays on ‘10 New Year’s Resolutions for Digital Families‘ on uknowkids.com and they’ve kindly agreed to allow me to share it here. Uknowkids.com has an excellent blog with fantastic resources for parents about safety online. The author of the post, Tim Woda, also has a number of excellent resources on his blog – which you can find here. These resolutions are practical, easy to implement and really good ideas – we thought they’d be perfect to share here.

1. Get to know what sites your child is using online, particularly social media. Webwise have an excellent parents’ section explaining all the major forms of social media. This guide is also an excellent source of information, which includes info on all the main sites and apps. It also goes into detail about how teenagers and children hide information online from parents, and how to manage this.

2. Talk about the rules. Uknowkids.com suggest rules related to the following:

• How and when your children can use social media
• Rules for digital privacy and security
• A discussion about the sort of monitoring you’ll be doing to keep track of what your kids do online
• Rules for communicating with people online, and in particular the risks of communicating with strangers

3. Set up a contract related to online behaviour. Be clear in what you expect from your child and the consequences if they don’t stick to their contract.

4. Monitor your child’s use of the Internet. Ask questions and check the browsing history of your child’s computer, tablet or smartphone. There are a number of programmes and apps out there that will help you to track your child’s usage. A really important point that keeps coming up is that if your child is on the computer a lot and there are large stretches of nothing in the browser history, you should be aware that your child is probably clearing their history.

5. Limit digital access. Technology can be a powerful tool, but it can also be a distraction from what really matters. There’s no reason for your child to spend every waking second on her computer or smartphone, and doing so limits family time, opportunities to learn, and real social interaction. Consider turning off your wireless connection or setting in place an hour of family time each night.

6.  Update privacy settings. Social media sites such as Facebook frequently change their default privacy settings, which means that previously private posts can suddenly become public. Take a few minutes to check your child’s privacy settings – as well as your own – and ensure they’re not accidentally sharing their entire lives with the whole world.

7. Back up your files. It’s not particularly fun, but backing up your files can save you lots of heartache. You can use a service such as Dropbox (which we use a lot ourselves in Peter’s) to keep access to your files, or can transfer your documents and photos to a small flash drive.

8. Become your child’s friend. If you’re not already friends with your child on social media sites, it’s time to change that. This is one of the easiest ways to monitor your child’s digital behaviour because you’ll receive updates when she posts a new status or photo. However, be aware that Facebook settings can be changed to block almost all content from specific users.

9. Change your passwords. Changing your passwords every few months helps keep your data secure from hackers and other threats. Take a few minutes to change all of your passwords, and tell your child to do the same.

10. Teach basic computer skills. It’s never too early to teach your child proper computer skills. Teach your child the basics in computers and programming. Our Hour of Code link was an extremely popular one – you can access it here. Also, there is no substitute for teaching your child why it’s so important to be safe online. You can access our previous post on web safety here.

Thanks again to uknowkids.com for giving permission to publish their resolutions and to adapt them. If there’s any particular part of today’s post that you’d like to know more about, please let us know and we’ll include it in future posts! We’d love to hear any of your tips for keeping the kids in your home safe online – let us know in the comments!

Our project was called ‘Cool Crystals’ and our question was ‘which produces the best result when growing crystals – sugar or salt?’

We found out that salt produces the best crystals. Adam’s granddad told us all about crystals. We learned that you have to use boiling water because the crystals won’t form with cold water. You need to use string so that the crystals don’t stick to the side of the glass container. We learned that saturation is when you mix in so much sugar or salt into the water that it won’t dissolve any more. It took more sugar until the sugar solution was saturated than the salt. You can watch a video of our work:

Mini-Scientist – Cool Crystals from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

Our favourite part about the project was mixing in the sugar and the salt. We were a little bit nervous explaining to the judges but it was a good day.

Thanks for reading our project.

Adam, Ryan and Lorcan

Congratulations to our new Student Council for this term. We are very proud of you and know that you will do very well.

Here are your new council. Listen to their very first podcast here!

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2nd Class decided to make New Year Resolutions. We will try our best to do special things this year, like help at home and improve our homework. Listen to our podcast to hear our promises! We even asked some of our teachers to tell us their resolutions!

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Hi I’m back with more updates from 5th class on our Write A Book Project. Last night, I worked on my storyboard and we started writing properly this morning. In class, we worked on good beginnings for our books. Our teacher got the resources here from Seomra Ranga.

The most important thing with the beginning is if it grabs your attention. It has to make you want to read more.

We looked at different types of openings. You could start your book on a normal day or in the middle of a big accident or event. You could also start by talking straight to the reader. You could ask questions like ‘do you ever dream that you can just speak without having to stammer?’ Or your story could start with a conversation.

I’m going to start my story by describing a big mansion in the middle of the city. I think that the reader will want to know more about who lives in the house.

Pick a good opening to a book. What makes it a good opening to a book?

That’s all for now. I’ll keep you posted!

Robert

Our project was called ‘Fizz Kids’ and our question was ‘which combination of carbonated drinks and Mentos produces the best reaction?’

We found out that Diet Coke and Coke produced the best reaction because it exploded the highest. The fizzy water made bubbles the longest but it didn’t explode so we concluded that sugar had some effect on the reaction. You can see more about our research in this video.

Mini-Scientist – Fizz Kids from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

In our research, we found out that the ingredients in the Mentos react with the Diet Coke. The Mentos also has little pits on the surface that releases carbon dioxide very quickly, which causes a big reaction as it forces itself out of the bottle.

Our favourite part was testing the project, but the research was also fun because we watched videos of reactions.

Alan, Andy, Johnny and Robert

Hi, I’m Robert and I’m in 5th class. I like writing all types of stories and my favourite books are ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’, ‘Big Nate’ and ‘The boy in the Striped Pyjamas’.

Our school is taking part in the Write A Book project. You get to write a book on whatever you want to. I’m going to be blogging over the next few weeks to tell you how my class is getting on.

So far, we’ve picked four suggestions for stories we might write. We picked four so that we had more choice to pick from. My story is about a king with a stammer. My other three choices included a story of what the fox really says, a biography of Muhammad Ali and the life of Bruce Lee. I chose my one because I saw ‘The King’s Speech’ over Christmas and I could see how I could write a new story based on it.

Tonight, we’re going to storyboard our book. This is so we can plan our beginning, middle and ending. We have a special copy for our first draft. We’re going to write our story on every second line so that it’ll be easier to edit.

I think the hardest part is going to be editing my book, but I’m really looking forward to writing the story. Most of my class have picked their stories but some aren’t sure.

That’s all – I’ll keep you updated!

Robert

My project was called ‘Bubbles in a bottle’ and my question was ‘what quantity of food colouring will make the best lava lamp?’

You can see me explain my project in this video. I found out that 20 drops of food colouring makes the best lava lamp because it gives a better effect when the water is darker.

Mini-Scientist – lava lamp from St Peter’s, Bray on Vimeo.

In my research, I learned that oil is less dense than water so it floats on top of the water. I learned that the Alka-Seltzer mixes with the water to produce bubbles of carbon dioxide, which pushes up through the oil. I learned that there are two types of food colouring. Chemical is made in a lab, organic is made from plants.

My favourite part was when I actually tested my project. Emily from Intel judged my project and I went first. I didn’t mind explaining my project at all. Here are some photos from my project. Thanks for reading all about it!

Oisín

During the first term, our students from 4th, 5th and 6th classes worked really hard to prepare science projects for the Intel Mini-Scientist showcase. For all who didn’t get a chance to see the projects on the day, we have decided to hold our very first Virtual Science Show. Over the next month, we’re going to showcase our projects as part of our participation in the Discover Primary Science Award. We look forward to telling you all about our projects and reading your comments. Watch out for guest appearances from 2nd and 3rd, who were too young for the Mini-Scientist Showcase this year!

You can keep track of all the projects on this post as we’ll update it every time we add a new one!

Bubbles in a Bottle

Fizz Kids

Cool Crystals

Rollercoaster on a poster

Electrical Edibles

Can one hand react quicker than the other?