Children and families at Ellington Infant School in Ramsgate have enjoyed another successful Science Week.
The annual event has become one of the highlights of the school year.
This year ‘Journey’, the wonderful wordless picture book by Aaron Becker was used to hook the learning during the school’s science week. The children were engaged by the story and couldn’t wait to explore different types of transport.
Ellington’s reception year group focused on travelling by water. They tested materials to find out which ones would float, discussing why they thought some floated and some sank. They also explored which of these materials were waterproof.
Year one looked at different ways of travelling in the air. The children made different types of paper aeroplanes and tested the designs to see which would travel the furthest. This involved engineering skills to create the different planes and measuring the distance they travelled.
They also tested which design would fly directly to a target. Children also made parachutes to help little toy people land safely. They made different sized parachutes to see if they could slow down the speed of the toy people falling to the ground. This involved measuring the parachutes and timing how long each one took to land. They learnt about gravity and the pull of the earth. They learnt about air resistance and discovered the larger the parachute, the slower it fell.
Year 2 were engrossed in travel on land. They used ramps covered in different surface materials to see if they could create a friction that affected the speed of cars. They applied this learning on their school trip to Walmer Castle, where they took cars to test on the big ramp. They also tested cars made of different materials to discover which ones they could move with a magnet.
At the end of the week the school welcomed families into Ellington to see the culmination of the work at an exciting science fair. Children and their parents were able to view and engage with all the learning displayed within the school environment.
Headteacher Adnan Ahmet was very pleased with how the week and the Science Fair turned out.
He said: “After an enjoyable week of creative science learning, it was amazing to see so many families come in to celebrate with their children, and to see the quite incredible results of the week’s activities.
“ It is clear that both the children and adults have worked very hard this week. We are very grateful to our Science Leader, Miss Beverley, for doing such a great job of organising the week and to the rest of the staff for ensuring everything went as smoothly as possible.
“A huge thank you to those families who took time out of their day to come and visit our Science Fair too. I know it means a lot to the children to see their families supporting their learning.”