Making learning fun is expanding student interest at Woronora River Public School, as classes mark national Science Week.
It might look like these children are taking a messy break, but getting their hands sticky is a tactile yet educational lesson.
The small school of 64 pupils is hosting its annual science night on Thursday evening, a community event that takes place each year for Science Week (August 12-20).
This year's theme is innovation: powering future industries, and during the event, pupils will participate in activities that address each area of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM).
Through active investigation, they use slime to probe the physics behind play tasks. Pupils are provided questions that they will need to find the answer to by exploring each activity. They investigate the chemistry and composition of how and why slime works by adding colour, glitter, foam and sand.
The school also hosted an incursion program, learning about the solar system through an interactive portable planetarium that takes pupils through space.
The state-of-the-art planetarium is one of only two in NSW and five in Australia. Worth up to $50,000, it originates from Ukraine and its computer software was built in the UK and in Turkey. A spherical mirror projects images onto a dome shape, immersing pupils into a 360 degree world.
Orbit ranger Tabby Chappelow runs the in-house science program with Rise and Shine Kindergarten and most recently, partnered with Woronora River Public School.
"It's amazing technology and we are very lucky to be able to offer it to our community," she said. "We encourage STEM learning in the early years and we encourage our next generation of scientists."
It's an event that also builds community connection, with families invited to see children make new discoveries. Teacher Matthew Watters says STEAM is a branch out from the better known STEM, to include also art.
"A lot of things we do in art have to do with maths. Art isn't just about a painting - it can be multi-media," he said. "As a small school we are able to diversify and not just do stock standard units.
"One of these is a student-led water use audits, where the kids designed posters on ways to reduce water usage as we found areas within the school where water was being wasted, like leaking taps. They were able to get a sustainability grant of $15,000 to put in a garden.
"The new science and technology syllabus isn't implemented into schools until 2027, but we are already doing the subject with a future focus so that kids are engaged in interesting content."
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