We have really enjoyed celebrating Science week! At Southwick, we do a lot of work and learning about Space. So, for Science week, we decided to stick with the theme of space and had a whole school focus on Mars. Take a look at what we’ve all been up to.
Reception
We have discussed the order of the planets, the surface of Mars and also what the weather is like there. We talked about the similarities between Earth and Mars and looked at how close they are to each other. We looked at the rovers that landed on Mars, looking for life and discussed what it might be like to live in space. We then shared all of our ideas and made a ‘Mars’ planet in a tuff tray, then designed a poster to tell people all about the ‘Red Planet’. We had great fun learning about Mars!
Year 1
Year 2
We looked at the story of the 3 little aliens and the big bad robot and thought about how we could make the alien’s space rovers better for living on mars. We looked at structures and used our 3d shape knowledge from maths to build some new ones. The children tested the strength of these by adding in extra joins and support where needed. Some of us took our structures home to finish and this activity went on for nearly two hours in school. The perseverance was amazing!
Year 3
Year 4
Year 4 received soil samples from Mars from NASA. We began searching for signs of life! We all made a prediction from looking at, and smelling the samples. We then added water, then food (sugar for a high burst of energy) and then a mix of food and water. We then observed any changes.
Sample A didn’t change at all so we knew there were no signs of life. Sample B showed 2 of the life processes; the particles grew and respired (we could see bubbles!). It continued to bubble and grow for a couple of hours afterwards so we knew this showed signs of life! Sample C fizzed and bubbled but only for a few seconds so we realized this had only been a chemical reaction.
We were so amazed by our findings and Mrs Smith has emailed NASA to let them know there could possibly have been life on Mars!
Year 5 and 6
Today we were space engineers. We worked together to build a pulley machine that could hook and carry the containers of Mars soil up to a testing area. We then tested the two samples to look for possible signs of life. We did this by adding warm water to each one, sufficient to cover the sample then stirred and looked for bubbles. We found that it was sample ‘A’ that bubbled.
Bubbles could be a sign that living things are there but they could also be due to a chemical reaction
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