Acorns Science Week

7th March, 2011

Water, ran the prayer Acorns 1 wrote for our Open Assembly last week, is precious, and so we devoted this year’s Science Week to the subject. We learnt where it is found, what we use it for and how it behaves. We dug a dipping pond in the Acorns play area, filled it with water and planted it with marginal water plants. (A slight exaggeration because our wonderful grounds staff did the actual digging and most of the filling, but to hear the Acorns tell it, you’d think they’d created the entire thing using their bare hands. Talk about a sense of ownership!)

Acorns 1 went up to Mr Jones’s lab to carry out experiments under his eagle eye and Acorns 3 tried filtering some very muddy water in Forest School. Acorns 2, entranced by the pond, learnt a long poem about a frog in a pond which they recited at the Open Assembly.

Later in the week we spent sessions dissolving different substances, testing waterproof materials and making waterwheels, and on Friday the teachers set up six experiments for the children to work their way through: investigating everything from making an egg behave like a submarine, to manufacturing a rainbow in the classroom and marbling with coloured inks. It’s not magic, we decided, it’s Science!