STEM Grant Success!
We are thrilled to announce that our STEM grant application was successful! 🎉We look forward to putting this money to good use to further develop opportunities for STEM in our school!
Biodiveristy Week 2023
We recently celebrated Biodiversity Week in Mount Anville. We had lots of interesting visitors and demonstrations, and each class produced lovely projects representing Biodiversity in our local environment. We celebrated National Bee Day by dressing up as bees, participated in scavenger hunt activities and asked the children to photograph what biodiversity means to them.
Some of our visitors included; Ciara Hinksman, STEAM academy, Junior Einsteins and Rosemary O’ Flynn.
Ciara Hinksman, Mrs Markey Forest School
Ciara Hinksman is the founder of Forest School. She offers children an opportunity to work and learn in nature simultaneously. She provided an hour-long workshop to give the children a taste of forest school activities. Some of the activities included; foraging/identifying wild plants, making a wooden pendant using real tools, creating string/knots, hanging ropes/hammocks and insect/bug hunting. It was a wonderful experience and one which was enjoyed immensely. Mrs Markey, our very own Forest School teacher also provided a forest school workshop to the second class girls.
Junior Einsteins
Junior Einsteins created a fun and memorable demonstration filled with lots of interesting experiments. Their experiments included; slime science, elephant toothpaste, plasma ball: light the lightsabre, Barbie gets a hair raising experience, sparks of lightning, giant smoke cannons, hand boilers & static glow sticks. The girls really loved the hands-on and messy element of science learning.
STEAM Academy
In their demonstration, STEAM academy went through several problems the world is facing and discussed with the children how new technologies can help fix these issues. They then discussed the characteristics of robots and how they are defined and created. The most memorable part of the demonstration was meeting their robotic dog, Prox.
Rosemary O’Flynn
Rosemary very kindly returned to our school. She taught the children all about pollinators- which flowers they prefer, how we should protect them and what makes them so special! She focused on butterflies, bumble bees, honey bees and wasps. They even learnt that hover flies are also pollinators! Rosemary also read a poem she had written herself about a bumble bee.
Biodiversity Photography Competition
Well done to Caoimhe from Ms Noronha’s class, Eimear from Mrs Markey/ Ms Gumisiriza’s class and Georgia from Ms Sorohan/ Ms Falkner’s class who won our Biodiversity Photography competition.
Caoimhe Culhane, 6th Class
Eimear Tian, 2nd Class
Georgia, Senior Infants
ESB Science Blast 2023
In February, 4th class participated in the ESB Science Blast. The title of their project was “Sweet Dreams, How Does Food Affect Our Sleep?”
The Project
Could what we eat and drink our way to a better night’s sleep? 50 participants from our school were asked to put this question to the test. Participants were asked to eat/ drink the following foods before bed over a week; ice-cream, warm milk, cheese and a fizzy drink. Participants recorded their sleep data via smart watch, and the following morning, they filled in a detailed questionnaire.
They hypothesised that food does affect the quality and quantity of our sleep. Not only the time you eat it, but the type of food you eat would influence sleep. We predicted that having a snack just before bed would have an effect on sleep, both positive and negative, depending on the snack!! For example, they thought that eating food high in sugar would affect us falling asleep and make us restless throughout the night. They predicted that a glass of warm milk before bed would lead to a great night’s sleep.
According to the results, participants who ate or drank a sugary food/ drink before bed slept for almost an hour less than those who had warm milk or participated in the control night. Those who drank warm milk before bed also rated that night as their best night’s sleep.
They concluded from their study, that what we eat and drink affects both the quality of our sleep and the quantity!!
Their Slogan
Eat well, sleep well, drink right, sleep through the night
They had a great day at the Science Blast, saw lots of exciting demonstrations and other schools’ very interesting projects. They received very positive feedback from the judge and can’t wait to attend again!