
Food For Thought – Food Technology
Year 5 got a great opportunity to learn more about the research and development of cereal products today when a food technologist came along to share his experience and work as a project manager at Weetabix Ltd.
Inspired by the school’s recent plot of wheat and impressed by their thoughtful and imaginative ideas, the children were asked if they would be keen to try and grow some ancient grains for him next Spring. Some of these varieties of grain are so old legend has it that they were found buried in the pyramids of some pharaohs! How exciting to bring these seeds to life and see how they compare to our modern day varieties of wheat! We look forward to the challenge…
November 2017 Sorghum Update
Almost meeting the challenge…
It’s been an amazing surprise to discover that the Sorghum seeds that germinated at Brambleside school have successfully grown into healthy mature Sorghum plants with large healthy seed heads! Although it failed to grow to full maturity in our school garden soil we now know that it can be done and we will try hard to investigate why it grew so well in a school with a much sandier soil.
This crop is usually a source of grain in hot and dry parts of the world where other cereal crops cannot survive. It’s come as a real surprise to see them do so well in a sheltered sandy soil in another Northamptonshire primary school.
We feel real inspired to investigate this further next year by growing the harvested seeds from these plants in much sandier soil.
Any further ideas you would like the children to explore to encourage sorghum to grow in our school soil please reply below. We look forward to finding out more…
Year 2 Are Fascinated By Toxicology – Chemistry
Thank you so much to toxicologist, Dr Garry Dix who recently visited Year 2 to share his enthusiasm for his scientific career. Dr Garry’s fascinating talk included an overview of his work as a toxicologist working in the fragrance industry and his ground breaking research with blind people and their sense of smell. Year 2 were particularly fascinated to learn more about how the body’s defence system reacts to allergens when they come into contact with the skin. Dr Garry was very keen to answer the children’s questions which they previously emailed to him and offered a practical follow up session involving activities to encourage the children to work like real scientists.
We are very much looking forward to a possible follow up visit so we can work practically to develop our growing scientific enquiry skills and discover more about this fascinating topic.