♫ Our bags were packed and we’re ready to go! We’re leaving on a school bus, we should be back by three o’clock… ♫
Engines: check! Seatbelts: check! Everyone accounted for: double check! The day had finally arrived and it felt like the culmination of everything we had worked for throughout the year. Countdown to blast off! T-minus: ten, nine, eight, seven, six… Emergency! Emergency! Emergency! One of the astronauts needs a bathroom! False alarm. Resume course for Planet Scienceworks.
When our astronauts reflected on the experience of going to Scienceworks, many of them listed the bus trip and eating at the museum as highlights. There was a buzz of excitement throughout!
Shortly after landing on this strange new world, we realised that there would be time to explore the exterior features of Scienceworks. Stumbling upon this inviting play-based structure, we decided to stop and document our arrival.
During the day, our excited scientists ventured into 3 exibitions: Think Ahead, Sports Works, and Ground Up.
Think Ahead looked at the way we imagine the future, through innovations in science, technology, engineering and design.
Sports Works investigates the science of sports, how human bodies work, and design, materials and technologies of sports equipment.
Ground Up focused on foundational science, engineering and coding skills. This exhibit was designed to promote curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity and persistence… and a clear favourite from our Preps! Our featured activity, and ongoing inquiry involved learning more about the planets and the solar system, which brought us to the planetarium, specifically the show “Tycho Goes To Mars”. We learned about the cold, dry, and dusty red planet, and witnessed the adventure of Tycho as he made friends with the long lost Oppy (The NASA rover) who helped him explore and search for water on Mars.
Some of what our little space explorers learned:
Poppy: I learned that tiny stars you see at night that are really bright are actually Saturn and Venus
Tigerlily: I learned that you can touch somethings (the tin cans) and they were different weights (representing gravity on different planets)
Gabe: I learned that when we run, we are actually pushing through the atmosphere so it’s harder!
Harriet: I thought that Mars was a hot planet but it’s actually cold
Sachi: I learned that there is not much signal back to Earth from up in space
Upon our safe return to PHPS, we reflected as a group on the overall experience and wrote a recount of our trip. We are all focused on providing context for what we are writing about as well as adding detail by being specific about what we enjoyed and why.
We will continue to focus on writing using the 6+1 traits, which we use to model the writing cycle, and improve our finished pieces of work.