Every year we celebrate Science by concluding Term One with a three day week learning all about science. This year we have spent our first term learning all about The Hobbit. Cunningly, our teachers chose our science sessions to fit in with our topic.

We imagined that we were going on a quest through Middle Earth, just like Bilbo Baggins. On Monday morning, we went down to the circle playground and built shelters in groups. We needed them to be waterproof, comfy, warm, easy to build and windproof. We poured a watering can of water over the top of the shelters and put our hands underneath to see if they were waterproof or not. Unfortunately, none of the shelters were! Miss Kane sneakily didn’t give us any waterproof materials which caused our shelters to be not waterproof. We had to think of a way that we could turn non-waterproof materials into waterproof materials. We discovered that if we covered material with wax, the water would run off the wax and drip off.

On Tuesday morning, we found ice dragon eggs near the mound under the trees. Ice dragon eggs have magical powers and we needed to take them with us on our quest. We took the freezing cold eggs to the classroom and were thinking of ways to keep it cold. We tried covering it with cling film, foil, faux fur and felt. Strangely, the faux fur was the material that kept the egg cold! The fibres trapped the cold air close to the egg and it wouldn’t let the cold air out. The faux fur is a good insulator. One group even had some of their egg left the following morning because they had insulated it so well!

We also learnt how to separate the salt from a salt water solution. We poured a bit of salt water into a tin tray and hovered it over a lit candle. The problem was that we lost the water as water vapour when it evaporated. We needed to come up with a plan to get the clean water back from the solution.

We filled the bucket with a salt water solution, placed a cup in the middle and covered the top the bucket with cling film and weighed it down with a pebble to create a dripping point. When the solution warms up, the water evaporates into water vapour and condenses into a liquid  on the cool surface of the cling film. It drips down to the dripping point and into the cup.

We had a great three days doing fun and interesting science to relate to our topic.

By Leo, Georgia and Luke