Year 5 Visit the Natural History Museum

 This week, we have been to the Natural History Museum! The children were wonderful ambassadors for our school as we set out on our journey. They enjoyed the train and the tube rides and behaved wonderfully! 

We were in awe of the building alone, when we first arrived! We were very busy while we were there but managed to squeeze in a visit to the 'From the Beginning' exhibition. Here the children could explore the planets, the moon and the sun from our solar system. The interactive exhibits helped the children to learn some key facts about them! 

'We learned that Pluto might not be a planet, it is now thought it is a small comet.' - Ivy 

'The average temperature of the Sun's surface is 5000 degrees celsius.' - Noel 

'The average temperature on Saturn is -289 degrees celsius.' - Kachi 

We were incredibly lucky to also have a workshop booked! The workshop centered around our IPC topic of 'Mission to Mars'. The children became engineers, designers and scientists all rolled into one! They were set the challenge of making a robot (a rover) to send to Mars! This rover had to be a certain weight, which the children were responsible for weighing. It also had to have some features for research e,g, a fitted camera or a rock sample collector. Once the children had worked together to build their rovers, they then had the opportunity to code them to move around!

'I added noises to my rover, as I was wondering if there was life on Mars. These noises would help the life get used to our planet.' 

'A rover was sent to Mars. It was there for 14-15 years.' - Hannah 

'I thought the workshop was really good and I enjoyed it when we tested our rovers on the mars floor.' - Harper 

'The coding was really fun. I learned how to use a lego motor.' - Dom 

'I really liked that we got to make the rovers move, we also were able to experiment with them, and then make changes to improve them and see how they would work on a surface like Mars' ' - Vanishka 

We then tested out our creations on different terrains that could mimic the rocky surface on Mars. 

This trip enabled the children to work together, to problem solve as a team and to test out their ideas and be scientists for the day! 

We were incredibly proud of all they achieved, especially as we were all very tired at the end of the day! 

Thank you to the parents who were able to join us - days like these cannot go ahead without you!