October was a busy month in 3rd and 4th class. We began the month immersing ourselves in a STEM project based on rivers. We studied the journey of a river, to discover it has three parts. It has an upper, middle and lower course. We learned all about the source, tributaries, and mouth of a river. We learned about the River Shannon in Ireland and the amazing Amazon River in South America. We even created our very own model of a river. We used sand, stones, tin foil, food colouring and water to create it. We placed sand and stones at the edges of a tray, and ran the tin foil in a meandering way through it. We diluted water with blue food colouring in a jug and poured into onto the tinfoil. However, we discovered this wasn’t an accurate model of a river as it wasn’t flowing. We came up with a plan to punch some holes with a pencil at the ‘mouth of the river’ and it did the trick. Our model river began to flow out into the sea, imitating a real river.

We then turned our focus to building a bridge to cross the river! We put our engineering hats on and worked in groups to design a bridge that would work. The aim was to ensure our bridge designs would hold a toy car for 30 seconds. We used a variety of materials to create our bridges, One team used building blocks, another used Lego, we had another group using cardboard and recycled materials, one using lollipop sticks and sellotape and we had an edible bridge made from ‘Pringles’. We used team effort, discussion, reason and problem solving to design and create our bridges. It was an exciting experience for us and allowed us to work as an engineer for a short while!

The history of Halloween came in a timely way for us and we discovered that Halloween dates right back to the time of The Celts. We focused on our scary Halloween stories first, where the children drafted, edited and redrafted their stories. We drew illustrations to go with them and we digitally added them to our typed version. The children really enjoyed using their imaginations and the writing process.

We rounded of the month with some very enjoyable Halloween pumpkin paintings and a haunted village craft scene!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween from all of us in 3rd and 4th class!

Cotton is a soft fibre that grows from the seeds of the cotton plant. The fibre is long and thin, like hair. After the cotton fibre is gathered from the plant, it can be made into thread. The cotton thread can then be made into cloth. The cloth can be used to make clothes for people and many other things. Cotton clothing is very nice to wear, especially in hot weather, and is easy to move around in.
There are different types of cotton plants. Some cotton plants grow wild in tropical and subtropical areas of the world. This is how cotton was discovered many years ago. Most of the cotton gathered to make cloth comes from crops grown on cotton farms. Cotton farms can be found in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas. All parts of cotton plants are useful.

Cotton is a natural fibre harvested from the cotton plant. Cotton is one of the oldest fibres with traces of cotton over 7,000 years old recovered from archaeological sites. Cotton is also one of the most used natural fibres in existence today, with people everywhere wearing and using cotton for various purposes. Millions of acres globally are used to produce cotton, whether it be new world cotton, with longer, smoother fibres, or the shorter and coarser old world varieties.

In our second Planet Money T-shirt podcast we hear the interesting story of a Brazilian cotton farmer called Pedro.

Planet Money is a joint project of National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA and This American Life, the Chicago weekly public radio show which focuses on coverage of the global economy.

Planet Money is making a very special t-shirt, unlike any other.  It’s a t-shirt that can tell you the story of its own creation.

Almost every single t-shirt out there is the result of a complicated global journey. We will follow NPR on that journey. We’ll research the people who grow the cotton, spin the yarn, and cut and sew the fabric. We have ordered a t-shirt and we will follow the cargo ships that bring our t-shirt from factories in Bangladesh and Colombia to ports in the USA and on to Ireland.  We’ll also examine the crazy tangle of international regulations which govern the t-shirt trade the whole way. Click the play button below to listen to our first t-shirt podcast.

Some interesting facts on Spain.

Link

Some interesting facts on Ireland.

Link