May 21, 2021

It’s ‘Up, Up and Away’ for Early Start Discovery Space

UOW Discovery Space celebrates 6th birthday with 3-day party

The University of Wollongong’s Early Start Discovery Space will celebrate its 6th birthday with a three-day party from 21 to 23 May.

With a theme of ‘Up, Up & Away’, the party will celebrate all things flight with shows, live music, storytime, art and lots of flight-based activities.

Early Start education and experiences manager Martha Johnson said it was exciting to be celebrating the occasion on-site in the Discovery Space after COVID-19 forced last year’s event to be held virtually.

“It’s great that we’re able to celebrate in the Discovery Space in person,” she said.

“The celebration will be really community focused, with a lot of the performers coming from different parts of the Illawarra.

“We’ve got lots of fun activities and events planned over the three days, all around the theme of flight.”

One of the highlights will be a new puppet show, Up and Over, that was created especially for the Discovery Space birthday and will be performed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 10am and 11am.

Singers and musicians who will be performing over the three days are Brian White, Rachel Tidbury and Angie Who.

The team from UOW’s Science Space will be coming over to join in the party, and will be running a rocket activity each afternoon from 1pm to 3pm, and performing their popular Bubbleology show each day at 1.15 and 2.15pm.

Storytime, held each day at 10.30am and 2pm, features Birth of the Butterflies, a dreaming story as told by the local Dharawal people; Dr Seuss’ cheerful classic Great Day for Up; and Eric Carle’s Little Cloud.

Other activities include kite and paper plane making and flying, bubble-making in the Discovery Garden.

Children will be able to learn all about propellers in Helicopter School and make their own paper one to take home; explore wind power and make their own pinwheel; and test out a range of different items in the wind tunnel and see which ones fly or fall.