Science Spectacular

“I was not expecting to see that today…” Louis, Year 5.

Fireballs… Exploding gases… It was no wonder every child from Year 2 upwards donned safety goggles as they watched two Scientists from Pfizers perform their legendary Fire Triangle assembly. This literally kicked our Science Spectacular Day off with a BANG! The children learnt all about the three elements needed to create fire, they asked excellent questions and revelled in what was unravelling right in front of their eyes. The highlight being Mrs Boywer blowing Factor X (AKA custard power) in front of a lit flame – the result – a fireball! The children eyed their desert at lunch time with a little more caution: crumble and custard.

Whilst, the older children cheered the explosions the acorns of Upper Nursery to Year 1 were busy inside the Astrodome learning about space, the final frontier.

“I wasn’t expecting to get lost in 1000 stars this morning,” chirped Myles.

Every child got to experience the Astrodome during the day and all left with awestruck faces!

Walking around the school all that could be heard was gasps and ‘oooooh’s’ and ‘ahhhhhs’ as the children got stuck into the hands on workshops. Dr Long, brought along an amazing activity which involved children having their hands set on fire. Under the guidance of Ms Castro children worked with acid and used real scientific equipment to filter liquids. Science Sue, a Leonardo Da Vinci fanatic, introduced the children to his work about the body and bought plastic hearts for children to sketch in the style of Leonardo – focussing on what they could see and not what they expected to see. In the Computing Room Dr Mathew’s and her team of merry volunteers ran an outstanding session about holograms. Impressively, they managed to create a 3D version of Mr Groves! Proving once again that our inspirational Head really can be in two places at once. Mrs Dove and Mrs Irwin brought the younger children back down to earth in the afternoon with some mindful yoga sessions that had them thinking about their body and how it works. The other activities were all run by staff with Mr McKenzie leading the spaghetti bridge building activity, Mrs Mellin the K’nex rollercoaster kit (to help with physics) and Mr Dunn running the geodesic dome challenge. Mr Burrett and Mr Ainsworth also chipped in with some wonderful body and sound activities. Come 2.30pm the children were thoroughly exhausted after such a fun, fast, hands on learning experience. There was just time for a closing assembly to thank our volunteers and for Mr Andrews to introduce the final challenge of the day: The Tetrahedron Challenge! This saw the children working in small groups to combine equilateral triangles using cocktail sticks and marshmallows. An outstanding day! Full of fun and hands on learning! We will regroup and have to go a fairway to improve on this next year! But, as ever I Can and I Will! Thank you to all of the volunteers for running activities. This day is nothing without their help! Over and out… for now! Mr Andrews