One Planet picnic

Today we went to Muddisdale to have our Eco schools One planet picnic brunch. We are trying to raise awareness of minimising waste and protecting the environment by using local produce where possible. We used some Fairtrade goods as well in our menu. We made sure we didn't use anything that had to be thrown away afterwards and took re usable plates, cups and bags to transport our food. 

Mixing the ingredients for banana oat scones.

The scones look good enough to eat!

Mixing the batter for the pancakes.

Adding the egg.

Cooking away nicely!

Time to turn this one!

We took our food to Muddisdale for brunch and spread some rugs and tarpaulins to sit on as the grass was still wet!
We had strawberry milk made with Orkney milk and Scottish strawberries, Fairtrade orange juice or Scottish water to drink.
The pancakes were made with Orkney eggs and milk. We had butter and homemade gooseberry jam on them. The bananas were Fairtrade and the oats came from Scotland. We played some games while we were there too.

Enjoying our food

Is there any more?

A plate and cup tower competition sprang up!

I think ours is higher!

 

Careful!



Whoops!




In this game we had a red team and a yellow
team. We needed to work together to try to
knock the other team's balls off the tarpaulin
and keep our ones on!

 

The red team won!



This is a version of duck, duck goose. We used
the names of continents and had to spell them
out before we ran.

In a huddle counting to 50 so that the hiders
can find a hiding place in the game sardines.



Hunting!



Is there anyone in there?



Can we get in there too?



The champion hiders took ages to be found!

Thankfully after all that hiding everyone was found safe and sound and we all returned to school!
Here is the recipe we used for our banana oat scones. 

We made posters of our menus. You can see some of them on display outside our classroom.

 

 

We wrote some reports of our picnic when we got back to school. You can read some of them by clicking on the Wiki link at the right of the page.

Winners!

Winners in scrambling and golf!

More Circuit Challenges!

This week we used motors in our circuits and had great fun trying to make our different group models. Everything did work eventually but there were lots of problems that needed to be solved first.
Have a look at the video to see our models in full working order!

Planning the crane

Completed crane

Building the fan

Completed fan

The rotor blades working

Completed helicopter

Making the lighthouse

Completed lighthouse

The merry go round in planning stage

Merry go round complete

Circuit Challenges

Today we completed some challenges to make different types of alarms to protect our property!
Miss Dennison was our guinea pig and I think we gave her quite a fright! She was very impressed with our alarms and especially with the way we could explain how they worked and use the scientific vocabulary. 

This one lets us know if someone opens the cupboard door!

Working on ideas for a trip wire.

No one will get away with this box of secrets!

Our magic potion will be safe when this alarm is complete!

Working out how the alarm under the doormat will work ...

and fixing it in place! That should stop anyone
getting in without us knowing about it!

You can see how well they worked in the video below.

Conductors and insulators.

Last week we made circuits and used them to test various materials to see if they are conductors or insulators.

No light with a pencil in the circuit - it is an insulator.

A coin lets the electricity through so it is a conductor.

No light with plastic!

A silver ring conducted electricity.

Light from a chain!

A nail works ...

a rusty nail works ...

but not if the wires are touching the rusty bits!

Recording our results.