Classroom News

STEM

What is flight? ..........

How do birds stay up in the sky? What can make a balloon float away? How does a paracute work?

Objects can be airbone in a number of different ways, float, glide, and fly.

On Friday years Prep - 3 investigated these questions by making paper helicopters of different sizes with different weights.

Once the students had cut out and constructed their helicoptors they were able to test the flight pattern - which way did it spin, clockwise or counter clockwise, and how long did it take to drop - no weights, 1 weight, 2 weights. (paper clips were the weight of choice) Which size took longer to drop, the small one or the big one? Was it fast with or without the weight? Our 2/3 class took their investigations outdoors to see what effect wind and differing heights had, and how a flat or scrunched up piece of paper fell.

Garden Program

On Friday's we are lucky to have a visit with Lucy Vardy.  Lucy works for Bogong Outdoor School and has an opportuniy to join us each week to help our students contribute to our schools garden.  As well as taking pride in their school, our students are learning about horticulture and the ecosystems that live within our garden beds.  Over the course of this program Lucy will be replanting our edible garden and adding some much needed colour to encourage our local pollenators to visit and help our garden grow. We look forward to a plentiful harvest come Spring and Summer.

We are in need of some extra pairs of childrens gardening gloves.  If you would like to donate a pair please drop them off to our school office.

Canberra Camp

Last Wednesday our year 5 and 6 students set off on their camp to Canberra.  After a short lunch stop in Jugiong, and making friends with the locals , horses, they arrived in Canberra. 

Please read on; a recap written by ### ?Freya

The bus trip was a long one, but when we got there it was worth it. 

The first activity was visting Reconciliation Place. Our guide was so kind and showed us around.  We learnt the Melbourne and Sydney where fighting about being the Capital City so they smacked right in the middle of both cities.

Next up students where excited to attend the Australian Institue of Sport where many interactive displays where on offer. There was a skeleton machine and rowing machine.  Well done to River on the arm wrestle with Dave. It was a super fun activity and we had a great time there.

From here our group made their way to the Accomodation at Sundown Villas.  Once there we waited to see who our cabin room mates would be, the suspense was high.

 before enjoying a nice dinner after a busy day and celebrating Max's birthday with cake. YUM!

The celebrations continued on at Laser Tag. On the bus ride there we must note, the song requests got out of hand!  At laser tag we had to sit in the corner and find out our teams. We had a 2 hour session of fun.

After a good nights rest Thursday was jam packed. After breakfast we headed straight to The first stop was the Australian War Memorial. It was full of poppies and paitings. Next up was our visit to Parliament House. We arrived a bit early, but lucky for us this meant we where offered cookies, yum.  When we got inside we met our tour guide, David.  He showed us around the whole of Parliament House, it was super fun and we all enjoyed.  As promised at our X-Country Event, by Helen Haines, we did indeed get to meet her offically.

After lunch it was onto Questacon, where we all enjoyed the drop slide.  Before dinner we visitied Embassy Drive.  For the evening we were able to experience the

Dinosaur Museum at night. We were able to see real dinasour bones and some artifially created ones.  

On our last day, Friday, it was a bit slower paced.  We stopped in at the National Electoral Education Centre before making our way back home.

Lunch was fun at National Arboretum "The Pod Playground" 

Our bus ride home was a quiet one, that is untill the last hour or so.  We started to belt out some songs!

When we arrived back at home we were all super pleased to see our families!

We would like to give a HUGE thanks to Dave, Steph, Juliet, the Michelle's, Joy, and Andy, and Melanie we missed you, but thank you for helping organise it.  

Thank you for making this the best trip ever!

Reach For The Stars

Victorian Space Science Education Centre incursion.

As part of a STEM incursion Years 2 - 6 on Wednesday had an opportunity with Emma from VSSEC to revisit the rocket experiment. Students built and launched water rockets which are simple, cheap, safe, guaranteed to fly and can be launched repeatedly. Every rocket will fly! Students now have a grasp of how forces act on the rocket at various stages in the launching, flight and landing process.

• Students worked in pairs, helping each other build and launch rockets.
• The aim is to hit a 5 meter Mars target.
• Students are had at least two launches of each rocket.