As part of our House Competitions which aim at building House and Community Spirit we had our traditional pumpkin carving competition. The boys did excellent with their creation (with ALOT of help from Mr George), but we are proud to say that we came 1st!

How does it work?

Many people are familiar with the STEM acronym (Science Technology Engineering and Maths), but fewer are familiar of the more recent STEAM acronym which also includes the Arts. With the addition of Art, typical STEM projects can be made fun and more engaging to all students while encouraging imagination and creativity which before was typically limited.

This Halloween presented the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how art plays such a fundamental role in STEAM by creating a spooky Arduino pumpkin project. Arduino is a highly versatile and open source mechatronics platform that many schools with STEAM being a fundamental part of their curriculum have adopted. It was used in this pumpkin project to control the ghostly sequence of opening and closing of the jaw and activation of the lantern and eye lights in response to inputs from the ultrasonic distance sensor installed in the nose of the pumpkin.