SMOKE rings and giant bubbles filled the air as children from St Mary’s Catholic School First School enjoyed a day of scientific fun and experiments.

The Dorchester school received a visit from Mr G’s Science Show in a bid to help them get excited about science.

The youngsters were able to get hands on in a range of wacky and wonderful experiments while learning at the same time.

After starting off with a whole school assembly each Year, from Reception to Year 4, had a session with Mr G so the whole school was able to benefit from his visit.

The visit was organised by Year 1 teacher and the school’s science subject leader Gail Tucker.

She said: “It’s a way of keeping their interest and excitement in science.”

Mrs Tucker said she was grateful to the school’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) for funding Mr G’s visit.

She said: “We are very lucky the PTA have funded this so parents have not been charged. There are a lot of people like Mr G available but you have to pay.

“The children are all very excited about it and it’s lovely to be able to do it.”

Mr G said his experiments were all about engaging the children and getting them excited about science.

He said: “We are talking about materials and science and using a whole variety of experiments to enthral and excite.

“We want to get them all excited and thinking about science as well as doing science and most of all having fun.”

Mrs Tucker said she was grateful to Mr G for passing on some tips so teachers could recreate some of the experiments in classes in the future.

She said: “The nice thing about Mr G is he’s not precious about his secrets and he said if we want to do these things again in lessons we can follow it up so we’ve got a lot of new ideas and things we haven’t seen before.”

Eco-friendly project ST Mary’s Catholic First School in Lucetta Lane has up to 150 children across five classes each with its own class teacher and teaching assistant.

The school, which opened in 1966, underwent a major renovation in 1988 and an eco-friendly building project saw two new classrooms added in 2008. Pre-school provision is also available at Haycorns and the former reception classroom is now the Kids’ Zone offering out of school hours care.

The school is a member of the Dorchester Area Schools Partnership (DASP) and was received a good overall rating from Ofsted in its last inspection in July, 2010.

The rating came after significant improvements from the inspection in 2007, when it was rated as satisfactory.