With engineering well underway this term, the focus for the second half of the program shifted to investigating what we could do to improve our designs, how we could change things, exploring why other students had chosen to build things a certain way and generally taking a moment to appreciate each other’s creations and talk together about them. This has generated chatter between students and at times has seen new partnerships develop, with exchanges of design tips and loads of positive comments between students.

Pre-Primary have drawn self-portraits and framed them using materials found in the STEM collaboratory. Then we decided to take it a step further and figure out how we could 3D print the drawings into name tags for their school bags. It’s a work in progress but so far things are looking good. Year 1s investigated repelling and why water paints didn’t ruin their crayon colouring whilst creating beautiful rainbow birds and Year 2 students researched flight mechanisms to create gorgeous paper plate birds they could fly, similar to paper aeroplanes. The flight continued into Year 4 with Rosie Revere inspiring many and varied winged fliers which will be tested this week to see whether bigger wings really do in fact make something fly further and longer.

With only a few weeks left to finish these projects, the students are truly improving and refining their engineering techniques. The exploration will continue into Term 4, with new and exciting STEM projects ranging from sports science to monster madness and of course, Christmas craziness!