St. Margaret’s Science Fair

Monday’s Science Fair was St. Margaret’s at its finest – staff and children alike showing off what creative, confident, knowledgeable learners we are and what brilliant communication skills the children have. The playground and hall were a hotbed of activity, from Year 5’s mouldy bread (and very testing classification quiz) to Year 1’s sorting animals. […]

Science Week Assembly – can you fit an egg into a milk bottle?

The answer is clearly no. Of course you can’t. The egg is bigger than the neck of the bottle. Science, however, has a way of making the impossible possible. The lit piece of paper burns inside the bottle, and the air pressure inside the bottle drops. The higher air pressure outside the bottle tries to […]

Science Week Assembly – why didn’t the balloon pop?

More Science fun. Two identical balloons, one flame, two different results. What’s going on? The first balloon contains air so when it’s heated, the plastic of the balloon heats up and begins to melt slightly, which creates a weak spot, so the balloon pops. The second balloon has water in it, which keeps the outside […]

Can you make a drawing dance?

More Science Week fun in the playground at lunchtime. Today, we made a drawing dance. We drew a stick figure on a porcelain plate using a whiteboard marketer, then poured water on it. The drawing began to ‘dance’ and finally lifted off the plate and floated on the water. Usually, a teacher’s heart sinks when […]

Science or magic? Polymers and pencils

We kicked off Science Week with a demonstration of the power of polymers. We took a plastic bag filled with water and a bunch of sharpened pencils into the playground and predicted what would happen if the pencils were pushed through the bag. We found that even if you pushed the pencil right through, the […]

Reception and Year 4 den building

Reception and Year 4 buddied up this afternoon to build den prototypes. Each group had a Year 4/Reception duo working as one of the following roles: project manager, architect, supplier and builder. The children worked so beautifully with each other and showed typical St. Margaret’s creativity, kindness and resilience as well as some very impressive […]

Preschool test what plants need to grow in Science Week!

Well our hyacinths have been experimented on this week. We placed some bulbs in cylinders so that we could watch them grow but we didn’t give all the flowers the same treatment! Some had nothing, some just had water, one just had soil to live in and the others had soil and water. All had […]

Years 3 & 4 visit the Science Museum

Years 3 & 4 had a fantastic day out at the Science Museum on Tuesday, where we visited the Wonderlab on Level 3 to explore the zones focused around Matter, Sound, Electricity, Light, Space, Forces and Maths. All of the exhibits are hands-on so the children had the opportunity to (amongst other things) build circuits, […]

Viscosity of liquids in LKS2

Years 3 & 4 have had a strong Science focus this week, as we continue our learning on the states of matter. We have used our observational skills to draw conclusions about a mystery substance, based on our prior knowledge of the three states of matter (see Year 4’s blog post for details). We have […]

Bath Bombs in LKS2

Years 3 & 4 have had a lot of fizzy fun making bath bombs this week. From a DT perspective, we talked about designing a product which is fit for purpose and appealing to a consumer. We then discussed the criteria we would need to fulfil in order to make a ‘good’ bath bomb. We […]