Seeing a sneeze

We have been talking about our bodies.

Today we were talking about our lungs, and about how sneezes can spread germs.

Teacher showed us a model of our lungs, made from a plastic bottle (ribs), a yellow balloon (lung), and a purple balloon (diaphram).  When you push the diaphram in and squeeze the ribs, the air in the lung is pushed out of our bodies, but when you pull the diaphram and let the ribs expand the air rushes in to fill your lung.

We were really looking forward to seeing a sneeze in action.

For this we needed a big balloon.

Teacher put some cornflour into the balloon, then blew up the balloon.

We burst the balloon with a pin, and the cornflour went EVERYWHERE!!!

This is what happens when we sneeze without covering our mouth.
From now on we are going to sneeze into our elbows so as not to spread germs.
We will also be careful about washing our hands when we go to the toilet or pick our noses!

Visit from an electrician

One of the dads in our class is an Electrician.

Tony came to our class today to tell us all about his job.

With his wonderful assistant he was able to show us his tools and tell us lots of things about electricity.

Tony showed us how magnets work, and he told us how electricity can be made making magnets (he even brought us in an electromagnet to see).  

He showed us wires and pliers, and explained how electricity comes to our houses from the electrical generating stations.

Tony works with science every day in his job.

He taught us how to stay safe around electricity.

We really enjoyed Tony's talk today.
Thank you so much for such a wonderful presentation.

Road safety

We have been learning all about road safety.

We joined in with all these great songs!

We are going to wear helmets on our bikes and wear seat belts in the car to keep ourselves safe.

Visit from a textile technician

We had a wonderful visit from a mum in our class.

Kelly is a textiles technician in our local 3rd level GMIT.

She came to tell us all about her very interesting job today.

Although Kelly is more of an artist than a scientist she uses science every day at work.

Kelly works with all sorts of different textiles (materials) and different colours.  She works a lot with mixing colours to get other more exciting colours.  Kelly also teaches her students how to sew and she is great at fixing sewing machines.  She brought us some very interesting pieces of art that her students have made or she has made herself.

We love her job and were delighted to hear that it is a job for boys just as much as for girls.

We are so amazed that everyone seems to use some science in their work.

Thank you so much Kelly for such a wonderful talk today.

Visit from a product builder

 We have a mammy in our class who is a product builder with Boston Scientific.

Monica is not a scientist but she uses science in her work each day.

Monica explained to us how she works with the little metal components that are used by doctors to help make patients with cancer better.

She explained how each little piece must be well made and must be really really clean so it can be used in the patients bodies.

We think that Monica has a very interesting and very important job.

Thank you Monica for such an interesting talk today.

Working in a hospital

We had a wonderful visit from a health care assistant working in the dialysis unit of our local hospital.

Helena explained all about how our kidneys work, how kidneys filter out toxins from our body and keep us very healthy.  We learned about how important it is for us to drink lots of water each day, and not to drink too many fizzy drinks. We learned how important it is for us to go to the toilet when we need to go, and how our urine (our wee) looks darker in the mornings when all the toxins are being flushed out of our bodies.

Helena showed us where are kidneys are in our bodies (but we couldn't feel them because our rib cages are protecting them).

 Helena showed us some of the instruments that doctors and nurses in the hospitals use. She also told us all about her uniform (which she has to leave in the hospital so it can stay extra clean).

 We also learned what happens when kidneys don't work too well. Helena works with patients whose kidneys don't work well at all.  These patients need to have kidney dialysis three times every week.  They need to spend about 4 hours hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine.  This machine filters out the toxins from their blood and keeps their blood clean from toxins.

We heard about how doctors and nurses are very nice and how a visit to a hospital can make us better. Helena works in the hospital and uses science every day in her work.
We really enjoyed Helena's visit.
Thank you so much for telling us all about your job in the hospital!

Our daily weather recording

Every day we keep a record of our weather.

We record the kind of weather each day on our weather calendar.

Our daily class leader is responsible each day for putting out our weather stick and taking the rainfall reading from our rain gauge and the temperature reading from our thermometer.

It was cloudy,16 degrees and no rain at 11am today and yesterday.

When we were babies

We are in Senior Infants now.  We have grown a lot since we were babies.  We are so much bigger now, we know so much more and we are able to do so many more things.

Today we brought in baby photos to show teacher, and we also brought in clothes and toys from when we were young.  We talked about all the objects and then teacher hung them on our washing line for all to see.