Bees, Hybrid Creatures, and Whale Snot: Science Week Fun at Redeemer

Science Week is always a special celebration in our school. We run fun activities during lunchtimes throughout the week for the students to engage in, as well as during their Specialist STEM lessons.

This year, our activities focused on the theme: Species Survival – More Than Just Sustainability, including some of the activities listed in the Teacher Resource Book, adapted slightly to our context.

Our school is a Lutheran Primary School in the Barossa Valley. We have students from 3 years old, through to 13 years old (Early Learning (ELC) to Year Six). Our aim is to have all students across our site involved in STEM and Science activities regularly, not just during Science Week, but that is always our highlight!

This year, our youngest students – from the ELC through to the Junior Primary classes - learned about the important job that bees have in pollinating flowers. We shared a story together about the work of bees and then conducted a pollination experiment. The students also had the opportunity to make their own bee, program the bee bot robot to follow the stages of the bee lifecycle, read books about bees, learn to draw a bee as a scientific drawing, label the parts of a bee and even dress up as a beekeeper in a proper bee-keeping suit and role play using the bee smoker in the Flow Hive!

Our Middle Primary students had the opportunity to learn about animal adaptations. The students selected different body parts from different animals and combined them together to create their own hybrid animals. The creatures they designed were amazing! We also studied some of the more ‘unusual’ animals in the world and categorised what made them unique.

Our Upper Primary students conducted a chemical analysis of whale snot, thanks to the experiment procedure in the National Science Week Teacher resource book. The students loved learning about the technology used to collect the whale snot and the processes for analysing the samples to determine the health of the whales.

Our teachers also joined in the fun, with activities set up in the staff room for them to enjoy during their break times throughout the week. These activities included playing a biome game, focusing on animal adaptations, making their own terrarium, imaginative play in a miniature science lab, making hybrid animals and conducting the chemical analysis of whale snot experiment. It was so wonderful to see everyone across the school getting involved in the fun that is learning about Science!