St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

5th class have been practicing their sentences as Gaeilge! We have been making silly sentences on the clár bán! Maith thú rang a cúig!

We celebrated Valentine’s Day by making some print art!

As part of our research into the Winter Olympics and the various sports that are included in the games, we decided we wanted to find out more about bobsledding!

We found out that bobsledding is a team sport, which involves riding on iced tracks in a sled. These modern tracks are made from concrete and are coated with ice. The aim of the race is to reach the finish line in the fastest time possible!

Bobsledding was originally developed in the 1800s in Switzerland. We watched some old videos of the first bobsled (4 man) event in the inaugural Winter Olympic Games in 1924 and were shocked at how dangerous it looked! The two man event first appeared in the Winter Olympics in 1932 and the first women’s event was added in 2002.

After watching some interesting videos and learning some important information regarding how the bobsled works, we decided to try to make our own bobsleds that we could race!

First things first, we needed to plan! With any design and make activity we take part in, we know we have to make a plan first to take into account what we know about the subject and what we’re trying to find out or do. Planning allows us to develop our teamwork and problem solving skills too.

We know the bobsledders rely on gravity to move at the fastest possible pace down the track, with the pilot pulling on rings to steer the sled and improve track position. Bobsleds can reach speeds of 150km/h and the tracks are usually 1,200 – 1,300 long (the brakeman has a very important job!). We also learned that the bobsleds are nowadays made from fibreglass and are designed so as to not allow too much air get trapped in them. Bobsledders also wear full bodysuits to reduce friction and allow for a seamless entry into the bobsled from their running starting position. All of these factors were considered in our designs.

Using toilet roll holders, straws, tape and scissors, we began to design our bobsleds.

An important consideration we had to take into account is what we would use to weigh down the sleds. We needed to do this to take into account that bobsleds have maximum amounts they can weigh in total in order to compete. The heavier the bobsled the faster it will travel downhill.

The maximum weights are as follows:

• With crew and equipment for a 2-man bobsled is 860 pounds (390 kg). For a 4-man bobsled, the maximum weight with crew and equipment is 1,389 pounds (630 kg).

• For 2-woman bobsled, the maximum weight with crew and equipment is 750 pounds (340 kg).

Team A chose to weight their bobsled down with dice and Team B chose to weigh their bobsled down with €2 coins (4 in total). It was time to test our designs!

Our testing and results were interesting and best of all, lots of fun! We used school benches to act as the bobsled track and noted that they were positioned at acute angles.

We counted down and 3, 2, 1….race! After 3 races, we noted that the €2 coins were heavier than the 3 dice and so acted as a better weight and made the bobsled travel faster. After we determined this piece of information we decided to make sure both sleds we were weighed down with €8 in €2 coins and raced again 3 times. Again, Team B, who originally chose to race with the coins won. We discussed why this might be?

Our conclusion was that Team B’s bobsled was narrower (the toilet roll had been pushed in so that there was only a small space for any sledders to enter the sled) and this meant not as much air was getting trapped. This appeared to be the thing that was slowing down Team A’s sled. We noted that the sled must be constructed carefully, with enough room to allow sledders to jump in while running at top speeds and not too big that would allow air to be trapped, thus slowing down the travel time and speed. We also found it very interesting to learn that whatever speed the sledders initially push the sled at, determines how fast the team will travel!

We loved learning about the Winter Olympics and specifically the bobsled event. We celebrated everything we learned by decorating our classroom door and watching the famous film ‘Cool Runnings’! We really enjoyed it and loved that we knew how the sled worked while watching 😁

Senior Infants were learning all about food and the café in Aistear for the month of February.

For Science this month, we learned all about the journey of milk and how it gets from the cows to our fridges. We watched a video which showed all about how the milk’s journey starts with the cow eating lots of grass. Next, the cows are milked – this can be done by hand or by a special machine! Then, the milk is heated, this gets rid of any bacteria. After, the milk is kept cold and stored. After this, the milk is put into bottles. These bottles are taken to the supermarkets and put on the shelves. Finally, the milk is bought at the shop and makes its way to your fridge.

Senior Infants loved watching the video which was voiced by a little girl the same age as the boys and girls in our class. After they watched the video, we sequenced the the journey of milk on cards as a whole class, and after we did it in pairs and told each other the story.

We also talked about food items that can be made from milk, one of them being butter. The class watched a video showing how butter used to be made a long time ago using a process called ‘churning’. This is where people used to move cream very quickly in a big bucket until it hardened and turned to butter. Senior Infants then wanted to test if they could turn cream from a liquid into a solid – creating butter.

Step 1: Pour the cream into the jar. The jar should be about half full. Add a pinch of salt.

Step 2. Put the lid on the jar and make sure it’s on tightly.

Step 3. Now for the hard work! Shake the jar lots until you see a lump form in the jar. This could take a long time – maybe even ten minutes!

Step 4. Eventually, you will see a lump and some liquid. The lump is butter and the liquid is buttermilk, an ingredient that can be used in lots of different things.

Step 5. Put the sieve over a bowl. Open the jar and tip the contents into the sieve.

Step 6. You now have separate butter and buttermilk.

We loved how we were able to see how the liquid cream turned into a harder solid and formed butter. We learned that cream is made up of tiny pieces of fat surrounded by water. When you shake the cream, the fat pierces start to clump together in a lump.

After, we tested the butter by putting it on crackers and eating them – they were delicious and tasted just like the butter in the supermarkets!!

Senior Infants began learning all about procedural writing. We decided we wanted to write about how to make a cup of hot chocolate. We learned to write a procedure we had to include a title and bossy verbs.

We wrote our procedure together as a class. Then, we tried it out by copying out procedure to make a hot chocolate – They turned out delicious!!

We learned all about The Café in Aistear this month. We practiced ordering a starter, main course and a dessert.

We built small cafés in our construction area and write menus for our own restaurants in our literacy station. We had great fun!

We also celebrated Valentines Day this month. We made lots of Art including an I love you to pieces heart and love birds. We coloured in Valentines jars as well.

Today we celebrated pancake Tuesday with some fun activities.

We learnt about the ingredients that are needed to make pancakes and sequenced steps of making pancakes too. We also designed our ‘dream pancake’. Take a look at our work:

But of course the best part of the day had to be getting to watch our pancakes being made and choosing our very own topics to eat with them. Look at that amazing flip from Mr. Vance!

In 2nd class we have been working very hard on procedural writing this month. We created our very our pizza’s and wrote out the steps in chronological order.

We started with our –

Title

Ingredients/What do you need:

Method

We always share love and kindness in first class and we loved celebrating St. Valentines Day together in our classroom.

We made some lovely art work to let everyone know that it was St. Valentines day, take a look:

We then learnt about how people write cards and eat chocolate on the 14th of February so we had to join in!

In Junior Infants we love building. Whether it’s with Lego, wooden blocks or cups. Over the past few weeks we’ve had a number of building challenges in Aistear and SESE. Check out some of our constructions below

While learning about animals and the Zoo in Aistear, one of our stations was to build our our Zoo to house the animals using wooden blocks.

One book we read in class was Jack and the Beanstalk. This inspired us to try and build our own beanstalk out of Lego. We had a competition to see who could build the highest beanstalk that could stand on it’s own without being held for at least 10 seconds!

Finally inspired by our STEM for Fun day we had our own class task of building a wall made of cups. They were very impressive.

This month we have been learning all about writing procedures! We made smoothies and conducted STEM experiments, and then we wrote up procedures!

We also conducted research and wrote procedures about things we are interested in!

In maths, we were learning about length. We used meatre sticks, rulers and measuring tapes to measure the length of lots of different things in the classroom and around the school!

We have been focusing on procedure writing since January! We have baked, given directions around Bray and completed S.T.E.M activities. After each activity, we’ve written up the procedure. Here’s a look at how we got on.