Feeling right at home..

The BBC Life series is an excellent documentary program on plants and animals.
Having completed the worksheet on "Diversity of Animals", it is now time to sit down and enjoy a documentary on "Mammals". The boys realized that Whales and Dolphins are mammals too !
Perhaps we could watch the entire documentary series sometime..

Science and Teabreak

By late afternoon, everyone had enough of math for the day and we switched to Science.
We were doing "Diversity of Animals" and having tea break at the same time.

Teabreak was an assortment of Ritz biscuits with ham and cheese toppings.
Max said the ham looked disgusting but tasted delicious !

Leo

Leo was working hard again after lunch.
He was eating apples at the same time, great multi-tasking !
Leo is a playful boy but he is very quick at his work.
He can grasp concepts immediately and was drawing great models in no time.

Way to go, Leo !

Lunch Time

Lunch was spaghetti with beef bolognaise.
Everybody loved it except Max.
Max said tomatoes are his lifelong enemies.
To my surprise, he finished it all !
That is something considering he hates tomatoes..

Leo was all smiles as he loves beef and spaghetti !

Royce

Royce is a very quick learner. He said he hates models in the beginning of the camp but at the end of it, he was producing such great models ! He is very accurate and careful in his work. He just needs to pick up some speed, but he is a very smart boy !

As with everyone, its all about practise..
Slow and steady wins the race !

Fun Break

Having the addition and subtraction worksheets, the boys went for their well-deserved fun break.
Max was challenging Marcus to a game of chess. Guess who won ?
Leo was playing table football with Royce.

It turned out that table football became Leo's favourite game for the rest of the camp.
He could even play it all by himself !

Max

This is Max working very hard. He is the most conscientious of the lot and he is also very fast in math !
He has no problem with Numbers to 10 000, Addition and Subtraction.
Very soon, he became the envy of the lot when his YYC card is filling up fast !
He was setting the pace for the whole group.

Teabreak

Very soon, it was time for tea break.
Everyone had home made freshly baked garlic & parsley bread.
The spread is made from garlic, parsley and butter.
It turned out a lovely green after mixing and the children loved it !

They were all gone in no time..

Settling down..

After an orientation, the boys were settling down to start on their worksheets.
We started with a simple game of "Where to place my digits" and "Writing cheques".
Some of the boys have forgotten about the basics and we went through them again together !
"Let's count together" drove everyone crazy ! With numbers to 10 000, everyone started collecting stickers.. whew !

The Redemption basket

Marcus is showing everyone the redemption basket, from which they can pick a reward of their choice once their YYC card is completely filled up. Everyone can paste a sticker on their YYC card for every page of their worksheets done correctly.
Its not only about speed, you have to do it corectly !
What does YYC stand for ?

ClubNAKO 3-Day Math & Science Camp

Welcome to ClubNAKO's 3-Day Math & Science Camp !
As the year end examination is coming soon, the objective of this 3-Day Math & Science Camp is to provide a revision of Math & Science topics taught in school during the first semester.
Joining us today are Leo, Max, Royce and Marcus.

All good things come to an end

And that marks the end of our Learning Journey to the IBN Open House.
I'm  sure the boys will remember the broken bones of the pig and rats which the scientist were trying to experiment growing them back, the tissue scaffolding which looks just like spinning a spider web and the drug delivery pin ball machine ! Thank you for joining our Learning Journey today and we hope to see you again !

Do I want to be a scientist ?

So, hands up anyone who wants to be a scientist ?
No hands ?
The tour guide who brought us around was really good.
He was very patient with the boys who need the toilet at the most inappropriate time.
Opps ! we forgot something again.. sorry..
No, he does not need to go now..

Inspired ?

The boys were visibly tired after almost 3 hours of lab tours.
We saw how tissues were built like a construction scaffolding, how artifical bones are grown to join broken bones back together, how drugs target diseased cells and organs demonstrated by a pin ball machine, whcih turned out to be the favourite, of course !
Were the boys inspired ? Who wants to be a scientist ?

Sorry, no photos allowed !

Due to confidentiality of the scientists' research, no photographs were allowed inside the labs.

We first stopped at Biosensors and Biodevices where we were shown how rapid disease diagnosis can be done at the flick of a switch. In this lab,  microfabricated platforms are used for high through-put biomarkers, drug screening and automated biologics synthesis.

Representing Catholic High

There were many primary schools here today with the auditorium almost filled to the brim.
They all came in big groups from ACS, St. Margaret's, Ru Lang, Bedok North etc..
Representing Catholic High were Max, Marcus and Joshua. They felt slightly intimidated by the large turnout of the other schools and were quite relief to find that that we will form a small group with a handful of other students.

Presentation and Lab Tours

Through presentation and exciting lab tours, students will be able to discover IBN's interdisciplinary research, which integrates science,  engineering and medicine to develop practical solutions for the delivery of drugs and genes, cell and tissue engineering, pharmaceuticals synthesis and green chemistry, as well as  bio-sensing and bio-devices ! After a brief presentation, we were divided into small groups and taken through the various labs.

Hurry up !

Joshua is having nuggets, Marcus is having his usual fish fillet and Max is having Mcwings.
Max said he can eat eight at a go ! Spicy, aren't they ?
As the tour starts at 2.30pm at Biopolis, they were trying to eat as fast as they can so that we can reach there in time.
These three kids were at the envy of many others today  as many kids came by to ask them where they are going today..

Learning Journey to the Institute of Bioengineering & Nanotechnology

Joining us today to the Open House at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology are Joshua, Marcus and Max.

The IBN open house aims to introduce young Singaporeans at the Primary level to scientific research, specifically at the interface of bioengineering and nanotechnology.

Royce and Linus

Linus: What is this ? Where is your NEWater bottle ?

Royce: Oh, my maid accidentally threw it away, luckily, I still have the strap..

Linus: I see, you are really lucky. Want to go again ?