Rivers

We have been learning about the stages of a river and discussed how water can move materials. We investigated how a river moves materials by using a model. We used cocoa as soil, dried lentils as pebbles and dried beans as rocks. We noticed how the soil travelled all the way along the river from the source to the mouth of the river when we poured in water, while the rocks only moved a little. It was very interesting.

Static Electricity

This week in Science we learned about static electricity. We all had a go at rubbing balloons on our heads and jumpers to build up the static electricity.
We were able to make our hair stand up and pick up little pieces of paper. We also investigated if more rubs on a balloon would mean we could pick up more Rice Krispies. And it turned out we could! With two rubs we couldn't pick up any, but we were able to pick up over 20 Rice Krispies when we had rubbed our balloon 10 times. We recorded our findings on bar charts and the results were very interesting.

Writing with quills

In History we have been looking at what school was like in the past. We learned that they didn't use pens or pencils in the past, but quills and ink wells. We had a go at making our own quills using plastic straws and ink to see what it was like. It was great fun to try, but a bit tricky. We will stick to pencils for now in room 21!

A Starry Cityscape

In Art we had a look at the piece of art 'Nocturne in Black and Gold' by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. We looked at the dark colours and mysterious gold splatters in the sky. We made our own starry pictures inspired by this piece. We used purple and blue paint on blue paper to create an evening sky and splattered on gold and silver paint. We then drew and cut out cityscapes on black card and used chalk to mark in windows to create our scene. They look amazing!

History

In Room 21, we made a 'Classroom Museum' as part of our work in History. We brought in items from the past and had a chance to talk to the class about it. It was really interesting to see what everyone brought in. Some people brought in special toys, photographs, dolls and Ms. Phelan brought in an old fashioned iron!

We also explored games from the past. We got to have a go at playing some of these games. Have a look!

Our Beautiful Art

Last week we practiced our printing skills in Visual Art. We looked at the artist Richard Long and his piece 'Mud Hand Circles' as inspiration for our own work http://www.richardlong.org/Exhibitions/2011exhibitupgrades/nymudhand.html .

We looked at how he used his handprints in concentric circles to create a really interesting piece of art. We decided to make our own art pieces by printing concentric circles using corks. We also used our understanding of the colour wheel. We made sure each circle was one colour starting with red then to orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. We think they look brilliant! Check them out below.

Here are some pictures of the class printing the pictures. 

A great start to an exciting new year...

We've had a very busy and exciting start to the year here in room 21. Already we've been learning about the skeleton, 2D shapes, spatial awareness and writing letters to name a few. We've even started tin whistle lessons. Keep an eye on our blog to see what we've been up to!