Autumn Trail
Ms. Noonan’s Junior and Senior Infants went on an autumn trail in Adare. As part of their day out they identified signs of autumn in the environment. They also identified the different parts of trees and their function. Check out their video!
Following their autumn trail, Ms. Noonan’s Class sorted the leaves and fruits that they had collected into sets based on which tree they came from. Finally, they represented the seasonal change they observed in trees by their autumnal leaves finger paint art.
Colour Changing Flower Experiment
This experiment shows us how plants use their stems for growth. As the water is absorbed, we saw how it moves into the flower and the petals of the daffodil change colour.
How does it work? The water travels up the stem of the plant into the flower where it makes food and keeps the plant rigid. There are two things that combine to move water through plants — transpiration and cohesion. Water evaporating from the leaves, buds, and petals (transpiration) pulls water up the stem of the plant. This works sort of like us sucking on a straw.
The water movement process through tiny tubes in the plant is called capillary action. We used food. Imputing to see the movement of water into the flower clearly. the water with food colouring does not harm the plant but it allows you to see the movement of water into the flower.
We loved this experiment and observing the results!
A child in 1st Class also conducted this experiment as part of her Science Week project. She recorded an explanation of her experiment which was broadcast on RTE’s Afterschool Hub. We were all so proud!
Identifying Local Spring Flowers
Ms. Brennan’s class went on a spring flower hunt in our local area. They identified daisies, daffodils, bluebells, pansies and tulips. They described the size and colour of each of these flowers and presented their findings to the class. Finally, they created a video about our local flowers to show our findings to Ms. Noonan’s class.
Following their hunt, they learned about the functions of the different parts of a flower.
February Family Fitness Challenge
During lockdown we asked our families to participate in a Fun Family Fitness Challenge. The aim was to investigate how does exercise effect our heart rate. The powerpoint below was uploaded to all classes’ online learning platforms to help families engage with the investigation together.
Children learned that our heart rate is the number of times our heart beats per minute. They learned how to measure their heart rates.
Families made sure it was a fair test by counting their heart beats before, during and after exercise, doing this over the same amount of time (10 seconds) and using a stopwatch to make sure their timing was accurate. Before they began investigating they predicted what they effect of each of the five different exercises would be on the heart rates.
Each child then recorded how many times their heart beat in ten seconds after each exercise using a block chart.
An extra challenge was given to children in older classes. They compared their family’s results data and calculated the mode range, median and mean.
They further compared their families’ data by creating line graphs.
Finally they analysed their information and made their own conclusions.
