Science Week
During the week beginning 14th March, Kerr Mackie Primary School celebrated National Science Week with fantastic workshops, activities and visitors. The topic of this year’s Science Week was growth and we all got our hands dirty and planted seeds, found mini beasts in the forest school area and welcomed lots of inspiring visitors at Kerr Mackie Primary. Here are some of the comments our pupils made!
"Dr Dean Holt, a science teacher from Harrow School for Boys in London shared an exciting Zoom session with year 5 and year 6. He showed us some really fantastic chemistry experiments which looked like magic. He used a Bunsen burner and created different coloured flames. I thought that they were really amazing and I was totally blown away by the experiment where he created an oscillating clock and mixed three different chemical elements. The liquid colour then changed from clear to yellow to black and it kept changing for quite a while. Overall I found all of the experiments really unexpected and awesome."
"I thought that Dr Holt’s experiments were amazing and the explosions were so fascinating and I didn’t know that chemicals like magnesium and sodium were in fireworks."
"I loved the liquids that changed colour using magnets!"
"My favourite part of the science zoom was the ‘dragon fire’ experiment, when Dr Holt lit gases in a cannister making green flames."
We would like to thank Shelagh Henderson (Chair of Governors) and her husband Dr Mick Henderson for helping us understand biochemistry.
"I really enjoyed hearing how he uses science to explore possible diseases in blood."
"I found it incredible that biochemists could detect conditions like sickle-cell syndrome in new-born babies and then help ways to treat this. What an amazing way to use science by helping people keep and stay healthy. I loved hearing about the technology and amazing machines that are used to investigate our blood."
"I found it so interesting that you can explore the health of a person by looking at the colour of their blood under a microscope."
"Early years and year 1 loved gardening with Mrs Henderson and exploring the theme of ‘growth’. Nursery have started to grow cress in empty eggshells and we know it won’t be long before the seeds begin to sprout and they will be ready to eat. Yum!"
Our site intendent Craig Chaplin helped year 4 pupils to build a mini-beast hotel in our forest school area. "It was so much fun and we even built a little terrace for the insects," said Maisie, "and we all hope that lots of insects and wildlife will now move into the wonderful hotel!"
Year 2 solved the mystery of the self-inflating balloon and took part in a chemistry lesson with Ms Ebertz. We carried out a test in which we mixed bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. We found out that when those materials react, carbon dioxide is created which does not only inflate the balloon, but it also feels really cold when you touch the balloon.
On Tuesday, years 3 and 4 had a visitor that works as an underwater camera man, who told the children about filming basking, hammerhead and bull sharks. The children found out about the habitat of sharks, their life cycles and behaviour.
Sadie really liked Rob Taylor’s talk and the footage he showed, "I liked that he talked about lots of different types of sharks, for example blue sharks, if they don’t know what something is, they close their mouth on it to find more about it. And whale sharks don’t use their teeth at all, they swim around with their mouth wide open and try to swallow lots of plankton."
