Stuck at home in holidays? Looking for science + arts fun? Students 7-14 can keep busy as ANSTO’s school holidays club kicks off with science + arts STEAM Club!
STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths, and means building, coding, creativity and science coming together in a mix of hands-on and online activities.
Kids can take part in activities such as creative chromatography, stop-motion animation, creating video games, and decorating hexaflexagons – paper polygons with a surprising number of faces!
Manager of the Discovery Centre at ANSTO, Rod Dowler, says that, as Australia’s national nuclear science and technology organisation, “ANSTO’s longer time future is based on innovation and working with scientific and creative people to find unique solutions to some of the world’s challenges”.
RELATED: What does an ecotoxicologist do?
The Discovery Centre has run learning programs for many years and Rod says the STEAM club is a “natural extension.”
But why add the ‘A’ for Arts to science workshops?
Rod says including inquiry and problem solving with the creative process is critical to future employment needs.
“That’s why we have recently established the nandin innovation centre at ANSTO’s Lucas Heights’s campus to work more collaboratively with start-ups.
“But you are never too young (or old) to learn scientific process and creative thinking techniques so that’s why we have added the A into STEM for this primary school level school holiday club”.
Full STEAM ahead for this school holiday club
Kids take part in weekly challenges, and like uni, you can adjust the course to suit your needs, choosing to do a Graduate Diploma (5 weeks), Master of STEAM (10 weeks) or Dean of STEAM (25 weeks).
“While we’re not able to physically host educational workshops and events on campus at the moment, through our online environment, we’re still able to provide a creative learning outlet for kids – and most importantly, keep them entertained!” says Rod.
RELATED: You can take part in these COVID-19 citizen science projects
Author: Heather Catchpole
Heather co-founded Careers with STEM publisher Refraction Media. She loves storytelling, Asian food & dogs and has reported on science stories from live volcanoes and fossil digs
Recommended for you
March 4, 2020 Careers with STEM event goes full STEAM ahead
June 20, 2018 Making music with computer science
March 31, 2020 Free coding resources for online learning
April 2, 2020 Deadly Science: Indigenous STEM program for kids
October 18, 2017 STEAMpunk Girls
July 11, 2017 STEM education
