THE wonderful world of science was explored by nine primary schools from the Trowbridge area at an exciting educational fair.

John of Gaunt played host to the Holt, Holbrook, Hilperton, North Bradley, Southwick, St John’s, Studley Green, Walwayne Court and The Mead schools for a fair focusing on science, technology, engineering and maths.

The school children made mini-robots, tested their best paper aeroplanes, used fruits to power LED lights, got to grips with stretchy slime, used Rubik’s Cubes, and looked at how yeast is best used.

They then presented their findings and work to secondary school children at John of Gaunt, many of whom were mightily impressed.

Science community leader from Holt Primary School, Pauline Rodger, said: “This was such a worthwhile event. The children learnt a lot. It was a great, fun and practical day and the feedback we have had was so good.

“Some children said this was ‘awesome’, that these primary school children ‘knew more than they did’, that they would ‘try this at home’ and the ‘children knew so much and explained it so well’.

“The event itself was a great success with all pupils taking pride in presenting their STEM work.

“Because most of the presentations were interactive, the audience (secondary school pupils, each other and families) had a lot of fun and learnt a lot.

“The wider impact was within their own schools; the profile of STEM had been raised with many other related activities taking place for National Science week.”

Earlier in the day, the ‘Bat taps into science’ team at Bath University ran a workshop for pupils based on building bridges.

“Also, this provided a great opportunity for teachers to share and develop engaging, practical, child-centered science learning in meaningful contexts,” Mrs Rodger said.

“Commitment has already been made to next year and we will look at ways of making it even better. It really is very exciting.”