The third and fourth classes visited the Lifetime Lab for the “Explorers” Marine workshop last week . The Explorers workshop was a collaboration between Lifetime Lab, “Explorers” Primary Marine Outreach and Education Programme and Galway Atlantaquaria and it brought displayed and explained some of the wonders of marine life. Third class went on Tuesday the 12th of April, while 4th class visited on Thursday the 14th of April.

First we lined up in the yard and walked out the school gates onto the Mardyke. We walked through Fitzgerald’s Park and along the bank of the River Lee as far as Wellington Bridge on our way to the Lifetime Lab. In the Lab we did three experiments. The first experiment was an experiment where we had to make a boat from play doh and make it float. For the second experiment we had two plastic bottles taped together and we had to shake them slowly to make a tornado appear.Then we did one more experiment which was the water pressure experiment . What we had to do was  put our hand in a rubber  glove and make it as tight as we could and stick it in a bucket of water and we could feel the pressure of the water on our hand . It was really fun.  Then we went downstairs and there were three fish tanks with many different species of fish in them.They had goby,dogfish,flatfish and a hermit crab. And we saw dried out fish including Lobsters, Dogfish and Seahorses. Then we went to the playground and played with the digger and the water pump and we made a mini river with a dam on it and the force of the water turned the mill wheel.

On our way back to school we walked across the Shaky Bridge. We all jumped on it to make it shake which was great fun. Then we had to go back to school because Denis and Rickey were late for hurling  training. When we got back to school everyone was tired, so we sat down and had our lunches and we all lived happily ever after.

The pupils learned all about buoyancy, marine animals and tornadoes.