Who turned the lights on?

Just look at the models we made using circuits to create working lights and switches.

Olympic fun at TBS!

Today we joined the other year 2 classes from local schools to take part in a morning of multi skills training at The Blandford School.
We started with a warm up orienteering exercise and an activity which revealed three key words to remember in our preparations for the Olympics, Excellence, Respect, and Friendship.

Just look at these photos to see these words in action!

Electric designs!

In our Art we have been exploring and designing patterns. We used repetition, rotation, and reflection. Some of our designs got quite complicated and gave us lots to talk about!

Switched on kids!

Having got our circuits working successfully we posed the question 'What if we want to turn the bulbs on and off?'  We knew we would have to make a break in the circuit and put in a sort of switch. Here we are investigating two sorts of home made switches.

We wondered if different materials could be used to make switches. We tried plastic, card, glass and rubber but they didn't work because the electricity couldn't travel through them. The best conductors were the tin foil, the paper clip and the scissors because they were made of metal. 

Nature's Electricity!

There was a real wow factor in polar Bear base today!

One of the Dads had heard all about our work using batteries to make circuits and how we made our bulbs light up. He made this amazing clock powered not by batteries but by lemons!!

 

                                           Yes lemons! 

The electric current flows because a chemical reaction takes place between the metals and the acid in the lemons. 

The three lemons produce enough electricity to power the digital clock.

Wow! We are impressed!

Many Thanks to everyone involved.

Making connections!

This half term our topic is 'Making Connections'.
In our science we are looking at electricity. We have planned lots of questions we want to find the answers to.
We have already found out how electricity is made and how it gets to our houses.
Here we are finding out for ourselves how to get a bulb to light up. It's all about making connections!

We found we had to join the components into a circuit so the electricity from the battery could flow around and light the bulb. If the circuit was not complete the bulb would not light.

Some of us tried adding extra components. We found that if you added two bulbs to the circuit the bulbs shone less brightly. We decided that this was because they had to share the electricity from the battery

Young Enterprise Day

The first day of the Summer term was very special. We took part in a 'Young Enterprise' programme.
Young Enterprise is a national education charity promoting links between schools and business. Its mission is
'To inspire and equip young poeople to learn and succeed through enterprise'
We learnt that a community is a place where businesses provide goods and services for people and where families live, shop, go to school or work and socialise.
We talked about jobs that people do in the community.

We discovered that some people get paid by their customers but other people don't!

We learnt that everyone must pay tax, which is some of their wages to the government so that these important services can be paid for.

We also learnt that communities only have a certain amount of money to spend and that important decisions have to be made about what the community needs and can afford. We took part in a democratic vote. Later we planned a community ourselves.

But we found we could not afford all the things we wanted or needed so we joined up with other communities to share important resources. 

Finally we learnt how money moves around a community.

We had a great day!

Many thanks to Peter and Hannah!

If you would like to know more about the Young Enterprise Primary Programme log on to the website at

http://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/