Rainbird Primary School

Hello Rainbird, we’re NUSTEM. We’re based at Northumbria University, and we work across the region supporting children, families and teachers in exploring science, technology, engineering and maths. We’re particularly keen to help people recognise that careers in these STEM subjects are available to them.

On this page you’ll find a summary of the things we’ve done with your school, and links to follow-up activities you can do at home. You might also want to check out our calendar of upcoming events:

Events


Rainbird Primary website

23rd June: The Naval Architect

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Goat on a Boat 05What a busy afternoon Rainbird’s Year 2 class has had. We’ve been exploring floating and sinking with a little help from the youngest Billy Goats Gruff. We’ve designed, tested, taken measurements and redesigned to ensure that the goat made it safely across the river.

Now you’re back home, follow these steps for more floating and sinking fun:

  1. Go into the kitchen and find some aluminium (tin) foil.
  2. Build another boat and make it float in the sink.
  3. Test out your boat by adding 1p coins to it – home many will it take before it sinks??
  4. Try out a different boat design, change the shape of your foil and test it out again. Is it better or worse than your first design?

To find out exactly what we did in the session click here.

11th May: The Aeronautical Engineer

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We’ve been in Year 5 today making things that fly! Well… not quite. We’ve been making and testing gliders! Can you describe the difference between flying and gliding?

Check out our Flight activity page to try making some gliders at home.

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