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STEM Learning

Morgan McKeen —

This term in STEM we have been focussing on what makes us ‘Who We Are’ - our amazing human bodies! So far, we have learnt about bones, blood, the brain and this week we looked at health and nutrition.

We have learnt that bacteria in our mouth love to feast on sugar and as a result make acid which can cause cavities. This is why we need to brush our teeth! To see acid in action, we put an egg in a jar of vinegar and left it for one week, observing the changes. At the end of the week, the eggshell had completely dissolved and we were left with a bouncing, rubbery egg! We learnt that the vinegar (acid) had a chemical reaction with the egg shell (calcium carbonate). We loved touching the rubbery egg!

We have also been inquiring into the role of food in giving our body energy to grow and repair itself. We thought about the saying ‘You are what you eat’ and decided that this is true because what we eat has a big impact on our health and who we are. We learned that flamingos are pink because of the food they eat! We thought this was amazing and wanted to try an experiment to see how this could work. We added celery stalks to glasses of water mixed with food colouring. We observed the celery and started to see coloured water travel up the stem to the leaves, making them blue! Another example of how important diet and nutrition is for our bodies!