It has been raining so heavily these days. We know that this is because of global warming. Our Earth is getting warmer, ice is quickly melting, our weather has got more extreme and there is more flooding.
Recently we have had a lot of storms. Lots of nearby fields are flooded and the sea is very high at the moment. We know that flooding can occur when rain lasts too long or it rains too heavily, or when there is a tsunami, or when a high tide and a storm/strong winds occur at the same time.
The Lifeboat service in Galway do an amazing job, the volunteers save lives every year.
We chatted about flooding today, looked up all about floods on our interactive board, then put our STEM skills to good use and designed our own flood defences. We had a look at a wave in a bottle. This was made with oil and water coloured with food colouring. (Water and oil don't mix so we can really see the waves in the bottle)
This included: Working in teams to design a flood barrier. (We could select items from a selection of sandbags, marla, lolly sticks, cotton wool, newspaper, balloon, stones and rocks, just as long as we didn't spend over €2 in total) .Electing a foreman for each team. Costing materials and working within a budget. Buying the supplies. Constructing the flood barrier.
Tomorrow morning will be the most exciting part of all: Testing out our flood defences. Our LEGO man has to survive a sudden flood! We are so excited to see which of the four flood barriers keeps the water out for longest.
We are using all our skills of curiosity, questioning, problem solving, predicting, creating, collaborating, communicating, critical thinking, evaluating, finding information, offering explanations for our findings.
We really enjoyed this task. We had a great discussion on the benefits and downfalls of each of the different materials and their suitability as good flood defences. We can understand what an important job it is being an engineer and we felt each of us could become a good engineer in the future.
We enjoyed learning about and using all we know from Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
We love STEM!!!