Tag: LEGO

Half Term Science Fun

It’s been half term for most schools in East Yorkshire and North East Lincolnshire this week! But there’s no rest for us! We’ve been out and about delivering science workshops!

On Wednesday we were based at Burnby Halls and Gardens for their Community Day. After the terrible weather at the beginning of the week we were happy to see the sun shining!

Burnby Hall belonged to Percy and Katherine Stewart. Between 1906 and 1926, Percy and Katharine completed eight world tours, covering North America and Canada, Africa, India and the Far East, Europe, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands with Percy using his trips to hunt, shoot and fish. He and Katharine brought back souvenirs and trophies which now form the Stewart Museum collection. These are an eclectic mix of statuary, hunting trophies and curiosities.

Katharine died in April 1939 and Percy remained at Burnby Hall for the remainder of his life. He lived until the grand old age of 90, assisted in later life by his faithful housekeeper Miss Tibbott.

Both he and Katharine had no children and decided to leave the estate in trust to the people of Pocklington when they died.

On his death in 1962, these wishes were complied with and the Stewart Trust, established in 1964 was set up to run Burnby Hall Gardens and to administer the Stewart Museum collection.

The gardens feature 2 lakes which hold a national collection of Waterlilies

So it was a stunning location for delivering our slime workshops! We delivered 2 workshops throughout the day, both being fully booked really early in the day! The children made 2 different kinds of slime and learnt the science behind the slime. Everyone had a great time and we had some lovely feedback from the parents.

On Thursday we travelled to Scunthorpe to the Engineering University Technical College, where they hosted a Primary Lego STEM event, for Year 5 pupils. We delivered our LEGO wind energy workshop to a really enthusiastic group of children! They had excellent LEGO building skills and worked really well together in teams.

This was a really successful workshop. All the children really enjoyed it! And so did we!

We’ve spent the rest of the week working on a new Astronomy course we’re putting together, to be delivered in our planetarium. Watch this space!! (see what I did there?)

Have a great weekend!

Katie, Carol, Anita and Lauren

The Lab Rascals Team xx

Wind Energy

We love Lego, here at Lab Rascals! So we were ecstatic to be able to put it to educational use in our workshops. We are in the unique position of being able to teach science in schools in a fun way, so we were delighted to receive sponsorship from EON and Siemens to deliver wind energy workshops in schools in North Lincolnshire and Hull. Both these companies are big wind energy employers in the local area so we could really see the importance of promoting renewable energy sources and how the local area contributes to this.

We received funding to deliver 1 workshop each to 10 low income schools. Siemens workshops were offered to schools in Hull and EON workshops were offered to schools in North Lincolnshire. They were all snapped up instantly!

We begin the workshops by asking the children what they already know about wind energy and wind turbines, and then explain exactly how a wind turbine works. We have a large piece of turbine cable which we let them pass round. They’re always really surprised at how thick it is!

They are split into groups of 3 and then the building begins! We use LEGO Education Renewable Energy add-on kits, and they build a wind turbine tower, the blades and nacelle and a lego car. Some children are a whizz with lego and can build their part really quickly, others need a little help! Luckily we usually have help from Siemens and EON employees, and I’m sure they love it as much as the children do!

Once the turbines and car have been built we attached batteries to the turbine ask the children to find out how we get the most energy from the turbines by using desktop fans on different speed settings and using different numbers of blades. We then use that information to power our Lego cars.

These half day workshops are such good fun and allow the children to learn about important topics like renewable energy in a fun and engaging way! Watch this space for details of more wind energy workshops soon!!

Katie, Carol, Amanda, Lauren, Anita

The Lab Rascals Team xx