Gifted fifth-grade students decided to learn about the properties of certain substances that are the main pollutants of the atmosphere and how acid rain is formed. First, we watched an educational film about the occurrence of acid rain and its consequences for the environment, and then we began to perform experiments.

Experiment:

We inserted a burning sulfur strip into the Erlenmayer flask and closed the flask so that the suffocating gas created by burning sulfur would not spread throughout the class. Before performing the experiment, we glued blue litmus paper soaked in water to the wall of the flask and placed a tulip flower petal on the bottom of the flask. When the gas began to spread around the flask, the blue litmus paper instantly turned red, and over time the petal began to fade. The students made the following conclusions based on their observations:

1. The burning of the sulfur strip produced sulfur (IV) oxide gas, which has a very unpleasant smell

2. Sulfur (IV) oxide is soluble in water and when it dissolves it forms sulfuric acid, which is visible on litmus paper because blue litmus paper is an indicator for acids. This is also the explanation of how acid rain occurs.

3. Sulfur (IV) oxide bleaches colors. Since sulfur oxides are released by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), we once again confirmed that we will reduce atmospheric pollution, and thus the occurrence of acid rain, if we use renewable energy sources.

At the very end of the school year, we held a pub quiz where students solved tasks and guessed interesting facts about the countries, cities and schools we visited during this school year. It was interesting to remember everything, but also to learn something new.

At the end of the school year, we held a lecture for interested students and teachers about all our travels during this school year. The students who participated in LTTAs in Turkey, Greece and Sweden showed photos, videos and told what impressed them the most during the trip.

During the year, the fifth grade students of our school did a lot of experiments in nature classes, as well as participating in the Erasmus project and activities from the STEM field. They learned how to perform experiments, record observations and draw conclusions safely, observing all safety and caution measures. They decided to share their knowledge with the students of the first grade, in order to stimulate their curiosity and introduce them to experimental work and interest them in science from a young age. The Peters independently chose the experiments and prepared the necessary equipment and chemicals, with a little help and assistance from teacher Andreja Dorić. How to fish ice, How to teach an egg to swim, Why a candle burns, How to put an egg in a bottle and Colorful pencils are some of the interesting experiments.

On Saturday, June 10, the STEAM Center Association organized a festival for children aged 4 to 14 called STEAM fest. The festival is held as part of the project of the same name financed by the Ministry of Science and Education. At the festival, 20 workshops and demonstrative activities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics were held, and as part of them numerous interesting activities: conducting various experiments, making objects from different materials such as kaleidoscopes, windmills, catapults, parachutes, 3D print, run robots, code without a screen and many others. In addition, there were an exhibition of STEAM projects of students from 1st to 4th grade that were created as part of the project and are oriented towards solving various problems in the community. Activities were organized throughout the day, and interested children registered in advance for workshops according to their personal interests. Biology and chemistry teacher Andreja Dorić and geography teacher Goran Ledenčan held the workshop Through experiments to the distant past of the Earth, through which they showed, in an interesting and bright experimental way, how volcanoes erupt, how charcoal is created by dry distillation of wood, and how fossils are made. Each experiment was preceded by an introductory story and a conversation with the participants, and then we all performed the experiments together, "infused" with knowledge, according to the instructions. The children were delighted, and the teachers were rated excellent!

Science Week was held in our school from March 20 to 24, 2023, as part of the Science Friday project, intended for gifted students, but also for all other interested parties. The whole week was filled with numerous activities in the fields of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history and geography. There were activities for both young and older students. They could learn more about many topics such as water, biodiversity of flora and fauna, mathematical mobiles and numbers in mathematics, the amount of microorganisms in our daily life, recycling, the method of mummification, how a computer works, renewable and non-renewable energy sources, etc. During the workshops, they used scientific methods: experiments, experiments, practical exercises and debate.

https://sites.google.com/view/znanstvenipetak/znanstveni-tjedan?authuser=0

We organized a workshop where students conducted several chemistry lessons.

We participated in a science fair within the framework of the RaSTEM project, which was organized by association Klikeraj and Astronomical Society Višnjan.

In interesting workshops, we learned how to make toothpaste for different types of dinosaurs, looked through a microscope using a cell phone, learned about bats, sequenced DNA from a banana, hunted for asteroids, and met real scientists.

The fair was held in Đakovo, and students Nemanja, David, Petar, Lara, Filip and Patrik Šandor went on the trip, led by teachers Andreja Dorić, Luka Ledenčan and Nataša Mesić Muharemi.

Students brought from home different solid substances from their kitchen as samples (salt, sugar, flour, coffee, allspice, cinnamon...). The measuring amount was a flat laboratory spoon. The students have their own small digital scales and weighed each sample (they had about ten different samples). After weighing all the samples, they had to come up with chemical symbols for each individual substance. Then they arranged the substances in temporary tables according to some characteristic common properties (eg color, taste, use...). Mendeleev made 18 groups and 7 periods, and the students had an arbitrary number of groups and periods. When classifying individual elements in the Periodic Table of Elements, students had to take care of the common properties of the elements and the increasing mass from left to right. They had a lot of fun, but they struggled with arranging the elements according to increasing mass and realized that Mendeleev had a very demanding task!

The Mathematics evening is a set of interactive workshops that encourage the development of a positive attitude of students towards mathematics.  Participating in fun activities reveals to students the often forgotten - fun side of mathematics, creates new ideas about what mathematics is and what it does, and proves that we all successfully solve mathematical problems every day, even without being aware of our own talent. 

The main goal of the evening is to popularize mathematics as a science, to develop a positive attitude of children towards mathematics, and to show them how beautiful and fun mathematics can actually be. Students from 1st to 8th grade participated, already according to their wishes, and they were joined by students participating in the Erasmus+ project Fun & Engaging STEM Activities For Tomorrow's World. Some of the activities offered were: tangram, memory, domino, sudoku, association game, various social games involving numbers and games and brain teasers that required considerable effort to solve.

In the end, we all concluded that mathematics can be a lot of fun, and we look forward to the next Mathematics Evening.

TikTok: bit.ly/3PecgLt

The students then investigated how proteins "behave" in contact with an acidic environment and elevated temperature.

The egg white is separated into two parts. One part is placed on a watch glass or Petri dish and an acidic medium (lemon juice or acetic acid) is added, and the other part is transferred to a test tube and heated over a burner. After mixing the egg white and the acid with a glass rod, cheesy formations were observed, which means that the egg white coagulates, and the same was observed after a short heating. This means that a chemical reaction is taking place. This chemical reaction is necessary in the stomach (that's why we have hydrochloric acid in the stomach) in order to activate the enzymes that break down proteins into amino acids, which is great for digestion. On the other hand, the coagulation that occurs due to the increase in temperature is potentially life-threatening because the proteins in the blood can coagulate and a blood clot can form. The reaction is irreversible and therefore it is very important to lower the body temperature with medicines when we are sick.