Engineer’s Week 2024

Ms. Heneghan’s 5th class integrated technology with engineering using Google Maps to investigate different famous structures and bridges. The children collaborated to discuss designs and build bridges using Lego. They tested the weight the bridges could take.

Spaghetti and Marshmellow Towers

Senior infants explored how they could make the highest tower. The children worked in teams to explore designs and created many different shapes, as well as a few very sturdy towers!

DIY Weather Instruments: Recording the Elements

Ms. Leen’s 4th class engaged in a hands-on STEM activity to explore and make weather instruments to record the amount of rain, making a rain gauge, and the speed and direction of the wind with an anemometer. The children worked in teams to explore materials and design their weather instruments for their garden weather station.

Creating a weather station allows the children to collect real data that can be integrated into mathematics by creating graphs and bar charts. Exploring meteorology allows children to collaborate in teams and brainstorm ideas around the design and upcycling of materials to create weather instruments.

Crannógs

3rd class had been learning about the Bronze Age and Stone Age in Ireland. They had constructed a corbelled roof, as seen in Newgrange, County Meath, using sticks, but our new challenge was to build a crannóg. Crannógs were built using wattle, daub, and thatch with a small entrance door. Crannógs were typically surrounded by a moat with wooden fences for protection. They were circular and approximately six meters in diameter.

The children used toilet rolls, clay, paper, and sticks to build their crannógs. The most challenging part was the construction of the cone roof.

Building Bridges

The children in 3rd class learned all about bridges in Galway City and other famous bridges, such as the Golden Gate Bridge in California.

They discussed the different types of bridges, such as suspension bridges, beam bridges, and bridges built using arches.

Using classroom books, copies, paper, and playing cards, the children tried to build their own bridges.

Here are our results.

Elastic Band Guitars

The children explored how a guitar is made and identified all the features. Guitars have frets, a sound hole, a body, strings, tuning pegs, and a bridge. The children discussed and planned to make their own guitars in teams.

Materials needed included a shoe box, elastic bands, lollipop sticks, glue, thumbtacks, and scissors. They thought about each step of the process as they experimented with the different elastic bands. See our results below.