Primary Science Week 2023

Join us for Primary Science Week in 2023.

Below you will find information to get you started participating in a Citizen Science project or creating your own. You will also find a large range of projects from New Zealand and around the world that you can involve your classes in.

What’s in our Community?
You may want to find out which ‘bugs’ live in and around your school, what types of organisms live in your nearby rocky shore or what are the plants growing in your local area. Use the information below to organise a Bug Hunt or Tree Trek for your class or your school.

If you want to carry out a beach or rocky shore study, then all the resources you need can be found below in the Marine Metre Squared project.

When you have finished, share your finds, in the form of a poster, with us so we can showcase what you did and what you found. Send a PDF copy of your poster to [email protected]

Holding your Own Bio Blitz

Have a look at these suggestions of how to run your own Bio Blitz

iNaturalist – a helpful tool

iNaturalist can be used a resource to help identify most of the organisms you might find in your community. All the instructions you need to use this tool can be found here. Find out more information at this link.

Many thanks to Science Learning Hub, House of Science and Science Alive Matauranga for their support of Primary Science Week 2023.

Getting Started

If you want to know more about Citizen Science projects The Science Learning Hub is one of the first places to visit.

Try these links

Get involved with ‘Science Alive Mātauranga’  

Science Alive and Education Perfect are excited to bring you some great free resources including our ever popular live Q&A session for students, and a mini lesson on Citizen Science (plus some other goodies along the way).

This lesson is in the cross curricular subject area of Education Perfect, if you already have an account. If not, sign up for access to these free resources here: https://bit.ly/registersciencealive .

Some more supporting websites

The New Zealand Association for Environmental Education. Check out their website

Manaaki Whenua. Information here

New Zealand Projects

The New Zealand Mosquito Census with Te Papa
Use this link

Marine Metre Squared

The New Zealand Marine Studies Centre which is the education and outreach arm of the University of Otago Marine Science Department run a number of ongoing citizen science projects. Here are a few that might interest you and your students.

MM2 – a national intertidal survey project – https://www.mm2.net.nz/

Shark Spy – a national shark survey project – https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/shark-spy  and  https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sharkspy/shark-spy

Under the wharf – using heat plates to look at animal settlement in future ocean scenarios.

If you want to know more about these projects contact can be made at [email protected] or you can check out the website at this website

The New Zealand Garden Bird Survey is a great way to get your students doing some Citizen Science. The survey runs from 24th of June to the 2nd of July. It does not require any special equipment and is easy for all ages to get involved. Find out all all the details at this link.
You can read about 2022 results here.