Science 1-12a and 1-13a

We started back after the holidays with a bang! In primary 3/4 we are learning about our organs and skeleton and how to keep ourselves healthy.

First we undertook some activities to do with making a ping pong ball hover. We did it in three stages.
1. I gave the students a ping pong ball and asked them if they could make it hover. We talked about what hovering was and told them they couldn't use any other equipment. After they had experimented with this I saw 4 different techniques appearing. Lying and blowing, lying and blowing whilst cupping their mouths, standing and blowing, standing and blowing whilst cupping their mouths. We talked about the different techniques and compared which was the most effective.

2. I then gave the students a straw to use. We had decided that cupping their mouths meant that they were directing the air more towards the ping pong ball and wondered if using a straw would help them to achieve the hovering better or not.

3. Finally we tried using straws and cups together so wee if that was any easier. Before we tried using the equipment the students predicted whether they thought it would be easier or harder and gave reasons for their thoughts.

This activity was used as an introduction to talking about our bodies. Today's lesson was talking about lungs and ribs. We discussed what lungs are for, how to keep them healthy and things that are bad for them.

Then we went outside to try out some activities that would make our lungs stronger. We walked and breathed in for 4 steps then out for 8 steps. The students found this quite hard and seemed to think they were supposed to be holding their breath rather than exhaling for the whole time. Then we did some short sprints until the children became out of breath and talked about how that would make our lungs stronger.