Noah's Ark

This week we started our new topic on Transport and have been learning the Bible story of Noah's Ark.

We have heard and retold the story and explored it using small world toys. We also made some beautiful rainbow pictures using a variety of resources such as paint, chalk, pencils and felt tip pen. This included making some very big rainbow pictures on the playground using big chalk!

This afternoon we learnt a song called Please Mr Noah. In it we had to make the noises of different animals which were either high pitched (mice and monkeys) or low pitched (lions and bears). Not only did we perform the song making the sound of our animal in groups, we added movement and actions too!

Noah's Ark will help us in our maths this week as we count in 2s and in science as we explore floating and sinking and test materials to see if they are waterproof.

Ice investigations

Yesterday we were exploring the ice that we found outside. The children enjoyed breaking up the ice and mixing it in water, which led to an interesting discussion. Some of the children thought the cold water would stop the ice melting and others thought it would make the ice melt. So we decided to test it out!

This afternoon we did a science investigation to see what makes ice melt the quickest - putting it in warm water, cold water or leaving it in an empty bowl. We discussed with our talk partner which ice cube would melt the quickest and which we thought would be slowest.

Everyone thought the ice in the warm water would melt the quickest. But when it came to which was the slowest we were very divided. Half the class thought the one in cold water would melt the slowest because the water is cold and would keep the ice cold. The other half all thought the one in the empty bowl would melt the slowest.

We wrote our predictions on our investigation sheet and talked about how we could make it a fair test. We agreed that all the ice cubes should be the same size. Luke also said we should have the same amount of warm water and cold water in the bowls. We got the bowls ready, and so we didn't forget which was the warm water and which was the cold Luke and Hannah wrote some labels for us.

We used the lab timer app on the iPad to record the times. When we put an ice cube in we started the correct timer. We had to keep observing the ice cubes so we could see when they had melted!

Here are our results:

As you can see, the ice in the warm water melted the quickest, as we predicted. The ice in the cold water was the next to melt, and the ice cube in the empty bowl took much longer! We discussed where we could have put the ice in the empty bowl that would have made it melt quicker. Dexter said we could have turned the heater on in the classroom and put the ice cube near it and Luke said we could have put it outside if it was sunny so the sunshine could make it melt faster. We talked about our experiences of having ice in our drinks that melt and eating ice lollies - we agreed they melt much quicker on a hot, sunny day so you have to eat them really quickly!

Excellent investigative science Reception!