The project, which investigated ‘Which spuds cook the best?, was highly praised by the ESB Science Blast judges and the pupils were busy fielding questions on their study throughout the day from the many visitors to the stand.
The children also got to enjoy some of the activities on offer at the science fair including science demonstrations and VR technology experiences.
3rd and 4th class are investigating magnets and their influence on the earth and people’s lives. Today they had an opportunity to investigate magnetism and magnetic fields.
They also had a lot of fun looking at how south and north poles of magnets attract and how similar poles repel.
The infants are using some assorted educational apps and 6th are on hand to help out or give advice if needed!
Our third class visited the Irish Cement factory in Mungret for a tour of the facility. Concrete is the second most commonly used material in the world (after water) and the children got to view how the cement is manufactured.
Below is an account of their experiences and a gallery of photos from the trip.
Today 3rd class went to the Irish Cement factory in Mungret, County Limerick. They organised a bus to come and collect us at the school at 10.ooam. So we all got on the bus!
When we got there they brought us into reception. In there we met Elaine, Caoimhe and John. They said they would be our guides for the day so they showed us a slide show and a video about how cement is made. Elaine showed us some rocks: Limestone and shale.
Next we went down to the quarry and saw a big truck. We all went into the shovel and for a picture. They told us that every Thursday the guards come while they blow up a bit of the quarry. Then we went to the kiln and put our arms up to see how hot it is. Then we went back and took off all our safety gear. They gave us all a bag with goodies in it before we went back to school.
Molly
After the quarry we went to the kiln. The kiln is very hot. The rock has to reach 1450 degrees for the rock to melt. It can get to 2000 degrees, hotter than a volcano!
Ciarán
A kiln is a big round machine like a cylinder. Elaine told us to put up our hands and feel the heat!
Liam
The first stop on the tour was the quarry where we saw the loading shovel. It was massive! It had a bucket that could hold over 20 people.
Sinéad
A bee man called Benny came to our school to talk to us about bees. He said bees are good for the environment but their population is slowly decreasing. He also brought in a hive to show us, the main parts of a hive are the brood chamber, the stand, the super and the frames. There are three types of bees, the queen and the worker bees who are the females and the males are called drones ,but the drones don’t work. A bee can travel up to 5 km for food. A good queen bee can lay around 2000 eggs a day. In winter bees don’t hibernate, they must fly every 6 weeks. If you happen to own a hive you must put a mouse guard in front of the bottom so mice don’t get in during winter. After winter most of the drones will be evicted from the hive because they barely do anything. When you get a queen bee you must clip her wings so she doesn’t fly away. You would find the queen bee in the queen cell which is located in the brood chamber. Benny said that he feeds his queen bee with something he calls royal jelly. It is important you stay quiet if you are near a hive so you don’t scare the bees away from the hive. About a week after Benny came to our school he sent down tests for us to complete. Erika got the highest score in the test. Tadhg, 6th Class
A bee man called Benny came to our school to tell us about bees. He said that they are actually good for the environment. A female bee is called the worker and the male bees are called drones. When the female bees get cross the male bees will be evicted from the hive. The total distance the bees covered to make a jar of honey is 100KM. To keep mice out over the winter we usually use a mouse guard. The Queen cell is found in the brood chamber. The Queen lays approximately 2000 eggs a day. We know the Queen bee from the rest because she is the biggest and a spot is painted with paint. The gap at the front of the hive is 9mm. The frame of honey in the super is made from timber and wax. Aoibhinn, 5th class.
The school has been awarded second place in the National Cornmarket Cumann na mBunscol Awards in the Promotion of Gaelic Games and Culture category.
Members of the school staff were at the awards ceremony in Sligo on Friday night where the awards were presented. A video created in the school which highlighted the 2018 fourth class project on hurleys for the RDS Primary Science Fair was entered for consideration and the video received great plaudits on the night. The video was on display for the over 200 guests in attendance.
This morning, the current fifth class who completed the project and starred in the video, were pictured with the award and the one they received at the Fair in January 2018.
Third/Fourth class marked Engineer’s Week and the contribution of engineers to our daily lives with a series of activities.
Each child came up with a design of a machine that would transform their lives. There were a range of inventions from money making machines to dog walking robots and even a machine that would turn spiders & mice into kittens!
A construction activity was a great source of fun during Engineer’s Week. The pupils had to work in small groups to construct a tower using foam blocks. A Minion would be placed on top of the highest block and the height of the tower would then be measured. Pupils needed to use all the blocks and ensure that all the blocks in the construction were connected. Well done to the winning team whose tower rose to 73cm!
There was also an Engineer’s Week colouring competition where the pupils coloured pictures of different types of engineers. Congratulations to the prizewinners!
Yesterday on Tuesday the 29th of January, 5th and 6th class took part in the Learn it Lego Robotics competition. At ten o’ clock two people called Fergal and Cormac came in to show us how to build and program our robots. We were put in to groups with a box of Mindstorm Lego and a computer between us.
The first thing we had to do was build our robots using instructions on our computers. After we had built our robots we learned how to program them, our first task was to program it to go back and forth a certain distance. When we had mastered back and forth, Cormac and Fergal laid out a map of a maze. Our task was to get around the maze without going outside the black lines, it took a lot of measuring and being precise to finally get around the maze. If you had conquered the maze you could add on the colour sensor to detect different colours.
One team containing three six class girls got to the last stage which involved building an arm for your robot and programing it to pick up a coloured cube. At the end of the day they announced the winner.
The runner up was Team 1 Lillian, Holly and Keelin, and the winners were Team 9 Ella, Eva and Chloe. Overall it was a brilliant day. The three girls will be going to the final on the 3rd of March in Analog Devices.
The competition was run over one week, seeing students compete in live, multi-player challenges plus answering self-paced adaptive maths curriculum questions, all using Mathletics.
Throughout the week, Herbertstown NS pupils were well placed on the national scoring charts and our classes featured very prominently in Ireland’s top 20 schools. Once the final results were totted up from all participating schools around the world, Herbertstown NS placed 75th out of over 400 schools. Upon closer inspection of the results, it became clear that Herbertstown NS was the highest ranked school from the Republic of Ireland!
Well done to everyone that put in such a huge effort both in school and at home.
Mathletics will continue to be a valuable resource for our pupils for the rest of the school year with plenty of certificates and prizes still to be won.
Third/Fourth class looked at the use of arches in construction through studying the strength of eggshells. The class used maths books to test the strength of 4 egg shell halves. An amazing 14 books were stacked on the shells before they broke!
