Children at Welton Primary School have enjoyed an action-packed collaborative STEM week taking part in a range of activities involving the subject areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

Throughout the week, individual classes produced a STEM-based demonstration activity to be shared at the whole school STEM Fayre. The activities were based around the theme of ‘time’ and ranged from who could beat the clock to successfully move a marble through a pizza box marble run to designing a raft to float for the longest time.

Throughout the day, different classes joined by parents toured the fayre and had fun taking part in the activities on offer.

Gracie (Year 3) said, “I liked showing people how our experiment worked in the fayre. People kept coming over to see what it was about.”

Hannah (Reception) was pleased that parents had been invited in, “It was so nice when mummy came in because we could do every challenge together.”

At the fayre, staff and Welton families also brought together a collection of technological devices from the past for the children to look at and compare to modern-day equipment.

Welton children were also allowed to take part in the home school challenge: ‘Create the ultimate time machine’! A fantastic array of entries were received with Rebecca (Year 3) and Oliver (Year 1) receiving STEM prizes for their winning entries - kindly funded by the PTFA. Teacher Debbie Stevens said “We were impressed by the number of families who had embraced the challenge and worked together to create such unique entries. I think we may have some inventors of the future here at Welton!”

As well as STEM learning taking place in school, a group of KS2 children attended a workshop led by Somervale teacher Alice Low who was excited to teach children how to examine blood cells under a microscope. Alice fed back that the Welton children were brilliant and super enthusiastic! The two schools plan to collaborate around STEM with groups of children soon.

On Wednesday, Year 3 were lucky enough to visit Root Connections in Stratton on the Fosse, putting to good use the class set of waterproofs funded by Radstock and Westfield Big Local. A springtime woodland walk and scavenger hunt were followed by preparing, cooking and tasting parsnip soup - using parsnips freshly dug by Welton children that morning.

A whole school STEM collaborative project took place on Tuesday where children across the school joined together in mixed-age house teams to take part in a challenge to create the tallest tower (using only 30 sheets of paper and one roll of masking tape) which would hold a can of baked beans for 10 seconds.

Headteacher John Snell was particularly impressed with the collaborative skills on display. “One of our key school values is collaboration so it was fantastic to see the children working so well together to solve a tricky problem. A real-life skill!”

The winning team was Tyning House with their reward to help design new playground markings which are soon to be added to the playground at Welton.