Students at Spring Garden ES had fun while exploring the sciences during STEAM Day March 23. Community members came into the school to teach kindergarten through fifth grade students about science, technology, engineering, art and math through various hands-on activities.

According to Principal Eric Smith, Spring Garden aims to have a different themed day each year to introduce its students to fields they ordinarily might not have a chance to learn about. While last year’s event focused on the arts, giving kids access to multiple types of performances, the committee chose to focus on new fields this year.

“While Bethlehem Area School District finds the arts super important and we still have art and music and all of those things, at the elementary level they never get a chance to see something like dance or a performance, those kinds of things. They’re really few and far between, so we wanted to support that,” Smith said. “Then as we were planning for this year, we wanted to do something different and the committee that organized all of this got really excited about STEAM, so bringing in [and] continuing the arts focus, but also bringing in science and technology and engineering.”

This year’s event featured activities based in electricity and digital technology, 3D printing, plant and animal growth and care, robotics and drones, cartooning and architecture, as well as other presentations. Each grade level had the opportunity to participate in four different activities before attending a Mad Science Assembly.

“[STEAM Day] is also a way that we can showcase our community, so it’s a way to bring our community into the school. Everyone here is a volunteer and many of them have some kind of connections into the school. We’ve got parents, even grandparents of some of our kids, we’ve got community partners that are a part of Spring Garden [and] the district, we’ve even got former students that are in high school right now that are here today to give back to the new kids, the kids of this generation,” Smith said. “It’s really exciting.”