We are having great fun in our classroom! We have been learning about magnets during science and are having fun experimenting with the magnet poles. We learned that the same poles repel each other and the opposite poles attract. We used this knowledge to set up some races using magnets and cars.

This morning during out last whole-school assembly of the year, Caitríona announced the winners of some of the sports day races and some children in our class were awarded with medals for coming first or second in the running races. Congratulations!

This afternoon, we are planning to make some short stop motion animation films using objects from our classroom and our school Chromebooks. We can't wait to get started! What a super Friday!

We are having lots of fun in our classroom and are very busy learning together! We have been enjoying buddy reading - we even got to do some reading outside! We have also been busy gardening. Each of us gathered some seeds from fruits or vegetables we were eating at home and we are planting them this week in our classroom. We are trying to predict what plants will grow first. Also, we have been having great fun using the Chromebooks! We have been learning how to use Google Classroom and have tried some other programmes like Jambourd and Kahoot. It is great fun. 

Earlier in the week we carried out our investigation on the temperature in our classroom. Scroll down to see how we set it up. We spent some time discussing our results and here is what we discovered:

1. The average temperature of our classroom was 21 degrees Celsius.
2. The highest temperature recorded was 23 degrees Celsius.
3. The lowest temperature recorded was 19 degrees Celsius. 

Each station's results were slightly different so here are some of the children's interpretations from each station:

Aaya at Red Rubies: I noticed at my station that when the hours went by it got hotter and hotter. I think this was because our station is closer to the window and the sun reflected at the window.
Grace at Shining Sunrise: I noticed at my station that at 11:00am it was the coolest part of the day. I think this was because it was raining very heavily at 11:00am.
Arnav Yellow Yoyos: I noticed that the temperature went up and down. I think this was because the door kept on opening and closing during the day.
Ira and Varshith at Green Glowing Frogs: I noticed that the temperature only changed twice. I think this was because it gets hotter during the day.
Iga at The Diamonds: I noticed at my station that it was going in a zig-zag. I think this was because people were walking around.

Today we started our first temperature investigation. We are measuring and recording the temperature in our classroom for the day. Each pod is responsible for monitoring a different temperature station in our room. There are five stations in total. We are recording the temperature on our weather chart and creating a line graph in our science copies to show our results. Wish us luck! We will show you our results tomorrow.

We started a new science topic about heat. Today, we started our learning by sharing what we already know about heat and the questions we had about heat. Each pod had a scribe who took down the group's ideas before sharing them with the class. We also made a prediction for a temperature investigation that we are going to do next week in school. We will let you know how we get on!

We have been learning about matter in third class. We know that matter is anything that takes up space. There are three states of matter, solids, liquids and gases. We have been doing different investigations in our classroom to find out more about matter and we have linked our investigations to our artwork. 

Some of the properties of liquid include that they drip and flow. We used this property to create some drip art masterpieces. We added water to poster paint to make the liquid less viscous and more drippy. Check out our beautiful rainbow rain pictures below. 

Gases are hard to see and we wanted to find out if it they actually take up space. We carried out a science investigation using a plastic bottle, a balloon, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. We mixed the powder and vinegar together in a plastic bottle. Then we quickly put the balloon over the bottle. The two ingredients reacted and fizzed. The reaction created a gas which filled up the balloon. Look at our photos to see how we got on. 

Lastly, we have been discussing how states of matter can change. We talked a lot about water. Usually we see water in its liquid state but we know that if water is frozen it changes to a solid state and become ice. If it is heated it will turn to its gaseous state and become steam. We tested this idea with another solid. Martha used a hairdryer to create hot air and aimed it at some crayons attached to a piece of card. The heat caused the crayons to change from a solid state to a liquid state. We used a camera to watch the change up close on our interactive whiteboard. When the hairdryer was taken away the drips turned back into solid. We created some more rainbow art with its drips! You can watch a video of the change below and look at our before and after pictures.

Wow! We are so excited to be back and school and starting Third Class! We have been busy this first couple of weeks. We have been learning new routines to help keep ourselves and others safe. We are learning to sanitise our hands regularly and we even have some handy posters in our classroom to remind us of the correct way to do it. We also have organised our classroom really well into different coloured pods. 

We did our first science investigation of the year last week! We learned how powerful soap is. We wrote the investigation up in our new science copies. Here it is if you want to try it out at home.

We also started our first class novel of the year and we are already on chapter 3! It is a very enjoyable book.

Last week, we completed our first art project. We chose to do some paintings based on the work of Wassily Kandinsky called Concentric Circles. We each created a square painting of a 2D shape of our choice and then Martha put them together on the wall to create a whole-class painting.

We have also been spending lots of time outdoors. Our school has so many lovely outdoor places. During some of our PE lessons, we have been practising different class yard games that we can play together. 

It is great to be back at school! We will add more to our blog soon to update you on other things we are doing in school!
:-)