It has been quite an interesting week this week! It feels like we have not had a proper week at school with the strike action on Wednesday and Thursday, watching a fantastic production of Beauty and the Beast on Tuesday afternoon and having a fun-filled science week as part of British Science Week, but it has been such an exciting week too. Look below to find out what science activities we have been doing.

Mouldy Bread Experiment

We kickstarted our science week by investigating about how mould and bacteria grows. We firstly talked about how mould has helped in the discovery of medicine. We learned about Alexander Fleming and how he was so important. Can you tell your grown up about who Alexander Fleming was and about what he discovered? We then decided to ivnestiagte the effects of soap by seeing if mould would grow on bread. We kept one bread as our 'control' and we got one child from each group to touch it with unwashed hands. Another child touched the bread after washing their hands with a bar of soap. Another child touched the bread after washing their hands with liquid soap. This was to see which was better at stopping germs from growing. We still haven't found any mould yet, so we will leave the bread over the weekend to see if they develop any mould! Here are some pictures below.

Break The Ice

On Tuesday, we looked at how ice is melting on the planet and how that is a very bad thing for our planet. We wanted to investigate why ice is melting so rapidly, so we set up an experiment to see what was the quickest way of melting ice. We had toy figurines trapped in ice and they needed freeing! We had one group of children who were melting ice using warm water, one who tried to melt ice using cold water, one group using salt to melt the ice and one group used a wooden spoon to destroy the ice. The children predicted which one would melt the quickest, and then we got timers to measure the time it took to melt! The children were surprised to find out that warm water was the quickest method of melting the ice. We talked about how climate change and greenhouse gases are making our planet warmer which is endangering the planet. Look below to find pictures of our children in action trying to melt ice!

Rain Clouds

The final experiment that we did on Friday was an activity that all of EYFS and KS1 children did. Each class rotated around the other classes so we got to experience three different experiments! 

In EYFS, the Hedgehogs tested different surfaces to see which ramps would be best for a car to travel up and down.

In Mrs Taylor Day's classroom, the Hedgehogs learned about how a rainbow can be made by putting different food colourings in different cups, and having paper towels connecting to those colours to make different colours.

In my class, the children experimented by making rain clouds. The children learned about how water from our seas, ponds, lakes is evaporated by the sea and turns into a gas (water vapour). The water vapour condenses into water droplets which the clouds then rain when they are heavy and full of water droplets. The children used shaving foam, blue dyed water and water to make rain clouds. Here are some pictures below.