The lesson began as we carefully watched some drops of hot water cool and evaporate… slowly, crystals of salt appeared. It hadn’t just been water after all!

Year 5 have been learning about dissolving materials but not all materials dissolve. We made predictions about seven common materials and set about testing to see whether they dissolved in water, only mixed with it or perhaps did a bit of both. Some of the materials came as a surprise – our hot chocolate very slowly settled to the bottom of the water!

The answer is a surprisingly large number of different trees as Year 2 have been discovering. We have collected and identified leaves from trees all around the school, looking closely at the similarities and differences between them, to answer our question.

All four school houses can be found: Ash, Beech, (Horse) Chestnut and Oak (two different types!) as well as Scots Pine, Silver Birch, Alder, Rowan, Lime, Field Maple, Sycamore and many others including a tree that 2AH like to call (Mrs) Hawthorn(e)!

Year 6 have been developing their classification skills by creating their own charts to identify British Bumblebees. However, to get the hang of it, we started with something simpler (and tastier) by classifying different sweets.

Before Easter, LB1 planted some potatoes and today we went to check on them. They have shot up and are looking quite leafy now but we found that we had some weeds to clear away. Everyone worked together hoeing and pulling up weeds, even clearing some of the other beds ready for planting.

Afterwards, we planted some flowers seeds in pots. We can’t wait for them to pop up in a week or two!

Year 5 have been learning how to increase a force by exploring a series of activities with levers, pulleys and gears. We found out that although the force could be increase we needed a larger movement (pulling or turning) to achieve it. We related our learning to real life situations such as wheelbarrows, our arms, car gears and cranes.

3HC spent the morning carefully extracting fossils from rocks. We had to take lots of care not to damage the fossil as we scraped, chiselled and swept the rock away to reveal what was inside. Afterwards, we found out about the life of famous fossil hunter Mary Anning and how she discovered previously unknown, fossilised sea creatures.

In Reception we have been using our senses to explore our environment. The children were challenged to identify food items only using their sense of smell.   We also investigated how the colour of food influences this.  All the children correctly identified the mint oil in the green chia seed slime.  However, they though the red slime smelt of strawberries until they closed their eyes.  When we closed our eyes we realised it was actually orange!  Our favourite part was exploring the texture of the slime;  “it’s cold and slimy”, “lumpy”, “it’s hard and soft!”.  If the slime was hit it felt solid but when you tried to pick it up it ran through your fingers.  

Our eyes were useful in the prism investigation centre.  The children discovered how different things looked when observed through a prism and when placed on patterned paper it was magical how the patterns changed. We even discovered how to create a rainbow!  

We used our ears to identify the different animal noises on a CD and our sense of touch to identify items associated with them.  What an amazing day!

We enjoyed a fantastic science sleepover learning all about bats thanks to Worcestershire Bat Trust – we had an awful lot of questions about these amazing animals. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any bats on our walk through the woods in the dark (we did hear some owls though) but we hope WBT will come back in the summer for another night walk. We’ll certainly be looking at bats some more when we come to our habitats topic later in the year. 

Thank you to all the staff who looked after us!

Year 2 have been exploring a whole range of senses as part of our Science Festival, and not just the usual five we think of.

We explored how the smell and colour of food affects what we think it tastes like (yes, the green, orange and dark red drinks were ALL just lemonade) as well as how our sense of touch can tell different textures apart.

We also investigated vision, including colour blindness, how other animals see the world and playing a game of blind football with a special ball containing bells. We then took this further by exploring how bats use echolocation to find their food. 2MG also tried out a vision test called the Stroop test which made us laugh – we kept reading out the words instead of saying the colour they were written in: “red… green… yellow… horse!”

We also learnt about a sense called proprioception. That’s the sense that lets you know the position of your body – try putting your finger to your nose with your eyes closed. Sensors in your muscles and joints send information back to your brain. However, we discovered that it can be tricked by our other senses. We even fooled our brains into thinking we had an extra hand!

To celebrate British Science Week we have been busy carrying out investigations each day. We have been designing clothing for cosmic and gem to wear in the dark, we’ve built tunnels for them to travel underground and designed our own dinosaurs. In order to achieve the Early years explorer award we had to take part in at least 4 investigations and we are please to say that have achieved it and each child received a special certificate.