Dear Parents
It has been an out of the world experience at St Peter’s this week with ‘Our Amazing Solar System’ being the theme of this year’s Science Faculty Week. Space has invaded everywhere from lessons to assemblies, a whole school STEAM challenge and to the food we ate today (Meteorite meatballs in red lava sauce with crater pasta, followed by rice crispy cake with silver molecules and chocolate stars)!
We started the week with competitions galore from: designing animals and plants that could live on another planet, to postcards from other planets in our solar system, to next century travel brochures advertising trips to distant galaxies for your summer holidays. The children in Years 7 and 8 spent their science lessons this week with a STEAM challenge: to design and plan a colony on the moon. They had to use all their science knowledge from Year 6 upwards to solve the problems that the colony would experience such as how to get water, oxygen and food as well as how to deal with less savoury aspects of life away from Earth such as what to do with the sewage! They came up with some truly imaginative and novel suggestions and I am looking forward to hearing them presenting their ideas to me next week. Wednesday was the highlight of the week for many children when we had our Annual Big Bang Assemblies. Both the Pre-prep and Years 3 to 8 had their own explosive show where we had a look at some of the physical and chemical reactions that might take place if we were able to travel to distant planets. The pupils have told me their highlights included Smoke-filled Bubbles; Collapsing Cans, the infamous Elephant toothpaste experiment plus the aptly named Whoosh Bottle.
Wednesday was the highlight of the week for many children when we had our Annual Big Bang Assemblies. Both the Pre-prep and Years 3 to 8 had their own explosive show where we had a look at some of the physical and chemical reactions that might take place if we were able to travel to distant planets. The pupils have told me their highlights included Smoke-filled Bubbles; Collapsing Cans, the infamous Elephant toothpaste experiment plus the aptly named Whoosh Bottle.
Thursday saw Upper School pupils use their coding knowledge to digitally design a rocket to Mars, as well as working out how to communicate with the Mars Rover once it has landed.
Friday saw all the children at school stop lessons to fully embrace Space! Nursery and Reception made Rockets out of Recycling and then had a straw rocket challenge! The rest of the school worked in paired year groups as Space Agency Scientists working on the next Mars Rover. Their STEAM challenge was to design, build and test their own Mars Rover capable of carrying some delicate scientific equipment across the surface of Mars. In order to purchase the materials to make their Rovers, they first had to answer Maths questions to earn tokens to spend in the shop! There was such purpose and collaboration seen in each classroom and the end efforts were amazing. Have a look at the photos and I am sure you will agree that we might well be raising some future NASA scientists here at St Peter’s!
Have a great weekend and don’t forget to look up tonight and see if you can see the planetary parade; it won’t be seen again till 2040!
Charlotte Johnston, Head
