Rockets and astronauts

We finished our Solar System topic this week. It's been a really fun topic and we've enjoyed it. We really liked finding out about the space shuttle, and this week we made and launched our own rockets.

We made 2 different kind of rockets. The first was blow rockets - they were launched in the classroom. The different fin designs made them fly different distances - and also how hard you blew through the straw! First we laid out planet targets, then in groups we launched our rockets. Everyone got 3 goes and even the staff joined in!

Do you think anyeone's rocket reached Pluto?

Here's a slide show of all of the rockets being launched:



We made other rockets and launched them outside. They used a chemical reaction to make them launch.

First we estimated how high we thought they might go.

Then we set them off. How high do you think they went?

Sometimes when you are doing science experiments it doesn't quite go to plan ...

Mr Scott and Mr Mowat came to help us. They brought a rocket too - how high do you think their rocket went?

We had to stand well back to watch - about 10m away from where it was launched.

Then we did a countdown. 10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1   Blast off!

Look how high it went! Can you see it about the school roof? This is it on the way back down!

Here is a video of the launch.


We also got to try astronaut food this week. It's freeze dried so all of the water is taken out of it and it's very light for the astronauts to take into space with them. We tried cinnamon apple wedges, strawberries, peaches and neopolitan ice cream.



Which would you like?

It was crunchy at first because it was so dry but if you sat the food on your tongue and waited for your saliva to wet it then it was just like eating a normal peach!

We invited 5A to try some because they are doing the Solar System too. Some staff tried some - we're not sure if Mr Geddes likes it...

We've thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Solar System. Hopefully the Coasts topic next term will be just as interesting and enjoyable.

We had a food tasting for Holiday Orkney (lots of lovely local food like bere bannocks, cheese and fish), a food tasting for Ancient Greece (octopus, feta cheese, olives ...) and now a food tasting for Solar System of astronaut food. We're wondering if we're having a food tasting for next term's Coasts topic too ... Mrs MacNab says we'll have to wait and see.

Happy Easter!

Miss Persidou taught us about how they celebrate Easter in Greece. Did you know that they don't roll their Easter eggs - they crack them.

She taught us 2 Greek dances too.

We made Easter cards.

It was our last week of doing tennis in PE.

We finished our Solar System topic this week. We'll do a separate blog entry about that as we had a really exciting week with it!

We started thinking about the coasts topic for next term. We wrote questions that we would like answered during the topic.

Some people want to know a lot!

Do you think we'll manage to answer all of these questions?