Mr Schoner issued us with wrist bands with Hannah More Primary school written on them just in case we got separated or lost. We were put in to groups and then Dove class set off with Mr Schoner, Miss Ramsey, Ouna and Claire.
We walked to @Bristol via Gardiner Haskins through the under pass and past the church.
When we arrived at @Bristol Miss Ramsey said “This is a public area so be quiet, be sensible and have fun”.
Mr Schoner opened the door and led us in. A member of @Bristol staff called Kate told us where we shouldn't go and gave us a timetable of when to be places.
11.30 Learning about Forces
12.30 Lunch
13.00 Exploring Upstairs
14.10 Planetarium
14.30 Time To Leave
Kate also instructed us not to go to the 'building area' upstairs, keep in sight of our adult, don't run around and we must have fun! We were issued @Bristol wrist bands which had bar codes on. You scan the barcode after creating something we wanted saving like photo's, animations or games. We were then free to explore and play for about 20/30 minutes on the ground floor.
The first thing I looked at was a game where you had to capture sea creatures from all different time era's.
I then moved on to a game which was like a 3D picture of a woman. We had to place her internal organs and body parts in the right places it was fun and disgusting!
Next we played a game with a skeleton in a glass box with what looked like a mechanical track and lots of other tracks and buttons. One of the buttons would light up, telling you what to do. If it lit up on the pooh section you would press the pooh button and a brown ball would go into the toilet. If the wee button lit up you would press the wee button and any coloured ball would fall into the toilet. It was very creepy because the skeleton was sat on the toilet with his mouth open in a distorted way!
I then went to look at a skeleton of a monkey in a glass box. For some weird reason, it caught my eye because I thought it looked like the Smilodon sabre tooth cat skeleton I had for Christmas but, on further inspection, I clearly realised it was a skeleton of a gorilla. The skeleton was about a head taller than me and looked cool.
As I wondered round something else caught my eye which was a massive water feature. There were lots of metal tubes which were manually controlled by wheels. When you turned the wheel cogs consistently, water was pumped around the tubes and into a big area of water. It was really fun and I spent quite a long time with my friends playing with it.
My friend and I saw a hut that looked like a belly and we were very curious to see what was inside. There was nothing inside apart from voices going through the process of having a baby. We were pretending to be the baby escaping through the belly and then we had fun pretending to be a zombie. We had such a laugh.
There were many other games to play and things to discover before we went to do some learning about forces.
At 11.30am our group adult came and led us upstairs to a room where Mike then taught us about Forces. He talked about air resistance and gravity. My classmates and I joined in on a couple of activities which showed how gravity and air resistance worked. One example was with 2 balls which were the same size but different weight and we had to predict which one would land first or if they would land at the same time. We all had a go at releasing the balls.
12.30pm – we were led downstairs to the picnic area to eat our lunch.
After lunch we went upstairs and the first thing I did with 2 of my friends, was look in the mirrors that make your body go all different shapes – fat and short, thin and tall and one that made us look goofy! We laughed a lot.
We then walked around and looked at all the other interesting interactive games during which time we came across a computer screen and a camera which looked fun. You could create an image and take a photo then change it slightly and take another photo etc to create a stop, start motion animation. We spent a long time designing 3 animations involving massive bugs who destroyed the world. We worked together as a team to create our pictures.
Finally, our adult took us over to the Planetarium to listen to Kate explain about the solar system and all the many planets. We sat in a dome like auditorium in darkness apart from the stars and planets that lit the walls and ceiling. I learnt lots of information about XO planets and other galaxies and that some stars have their own solar system. I also learnt that if the sun boils up too hot it turns into a big red. It was fascinating and I thoroughly enjoyed the talk.
This was the last activity at @Bristol. We went downstairs as a group, collected our stuff and once we were all ready we made our way back to school the same way we came.
This was my most favourite trip of all eternity!
By Ben Maclean