Christmas Science day

This week we had Christmas Science day.  The school received a letter from Santa asking for their help to solve some problems.  They had fun carrying out experiments, making predictions and observations in order to help him.

Parachute Experiment:

We experimented with making a parachute so that we could drop the presents to Santa. We used a variety of materials including plastic, string and tape. Once our parachutes were constructed we decided to investigate which parachute would touch the ground first. We attached a block in the first parachute and a feather in the second one. We dropped both parachutes from high up simultaneously and observed what happened. Finally we discussed our findings.

Raft Experiment:

In this experiment, the children had to make a raft to help the reindeers cross the river safely.  They had a range of materials including lolly pop sticks, polystyrene, sponge, lego and plastic bags to make the rafts and had to work together in small groups. They used scientific language to talk about and explain their findings.

Skittle Experiment description:

We arranged skittles in a variety of ways. We made circles, stars, triangles and spirals. We also used the different colours to create patterns. Once we arranged our skittles, we predicted what might happen if we pour cold or hot water on the plate. We used our observation skills to observe how the colours mixed together.

Snowman Experiment:

We experimented with building snowmen. We decided to use marshmallows and icing sugar to create our snowmen. We wanted to find out how much icing sugar would be best to stick the marshmallows together.