Experiencing Science Close Up
On Thursday 9th May Year 4 visited the Science Oxford Centre at Stansfeld Park – a brand new, primary education site just down the road from school. After a walk across Headington, the girls got ready to head into the woods to explore the different habitats and some of the wildlife living there – they found signs of birds and deer, as well as spotting an orange-tip butterfly and a bright red cardinal beetle.
Luckily, they headed back into the centre just as the rain started, where a challenge was waiting to build Rube Goldberg machines in pairs. The children threw themselves into the task, trying out lots of different ideas and refining their plans through problem solving and perseverance.
Rose said, “one of my favourite activities was the best workshop ever, we used our ideas to create a machine out of bits and pieces!” and we really liked how we could have a go at this activity again at home.
Our final session of the day was in the brand new ‘Exploration Zone’ – a hands-on exhibit of 20 different activities to try. You could probably hear the gasps back at school as we walked in for the first time – even better, we found out that we were the first group of children ever to try the exhibit and we even got to meet the inventors! Year 4 certainly made the most of the activities on offer – Olive said, “the thing I enjoyed the most was the Exploration Zone. There were so many different machines that were so cool!” and Malaika added, “not only in the Exploration Zone was there the scarf shooter, there was also a bunch of other activities including the magnetic tiny balls which were fun.” We think the visit was a big hit!
