Students at St. Joseph Catholic Elementary School put their creativity and investigative skills on display as part of Catholic Education Week activities on Friday, May 8, 2026.
The school hosted an Art Fair for kindergarten to Grade 3 students and a Science Fair for Grades 4 through 8, welcoming parents into the school to see the projects students had spent the past three weeks creating.
Teacher Lori Kendrick said students were encouraged to develop projects connected to the curriculum through experimentation and investigation.
“They are really persevering through and not giving up. Trying things a different way if they don’t work the first time and using their investigative skills to get to the end of their experiment,” said Kendrick.
Among the projects was a 3-D heart model created by Grade 7 students Lyla Manthorpe and Ella Podsiadlo. Using water pumps and tubing, the pair demonstrated how blood flows through the heart.
“The water pumps act as a hydraulic system, which is a unit we did in science,” said Manthorpe.
After watching a video online, the students thought building the model “would be really cool” to create.
Podsiadlo said the project also helped her better understand how water pumps work.
“It uses the force of gravity to pull it through the tubing to make it work and function.”
Grade 8 students Lincoln Manez and Edward Pestano created a water generator that used a spinning windmill to generate energy for a motor that continuously pumped water back into a tank.
Manez said wiring the project together proved difficult because the wires repeatedly melted during testing.
Pestano said the inspiration came after seeing a similar generator online.
“I thought it was pretty cool — so I wanted to research if we could make it and we could.”
“I learned a lot about how they use water to create energy to reduce fossil fuels so it can help the climate.”
“This was really fun to do — even though it was really hard to do — it was fun.”
Another project combined water filtration and structural design. Grade 7 students Aiden Beckman and Thiago Castro built a homemade water filter using everyday materials.
Beckman said one of the biggest challenges was dealing with leaks.
“But probably the most difficult thing of the project was trying to find all the objects including salt rock.”
Castro said the project showed him that simple materials can still make a meaningful impact.
“I learned that anyone can make something big to help communities with small materials.”
The hands-on learning experience was something students said they preferred over traditional classroom lessons.
“Learning it this way — 100 per cent,” said Castro.
“It was just way more fun. We got to think about our own ideas and it was pretty creative.”
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
