He may not look like he can keep birds off too many crops, but Wirrabirra Education Support Centre students are proud as punch of their scarecrow, which took home the top prize at the Perth Royal Show.
Competing in the primary division with the theme scarecrow across the seasons, students’ hard work paid off, putting them ahead of seven other primary school teams.
Wirrabirra teacher Clare O’Brien said the win was the culmination of four years of effort.
“I’ve been a member of the Royal Agricultural Society for the last 10 years and I’ve entered competition myself,” she said.
“We found out about the scarecrow competition, we presented it to the school and they decided it would be something really good to participate in.
“This is our fourth year doing it and each year we’ve gotten better and better with our participation and this year we finally won.”
“It’s incorporated into weekly lessons and all the kids are really hands-on and involved, we’ve started to get some parent support, it’s become a very involved project.
“They worked on it over the term, so 10 weeks, from our kindy kids through to our year 6 students, all 50 students had input into the design and put on different elements.
“The students had a real creative outlet.
Students at WESC are special needs students, and Ms O’Brien said that STEM learning was vitally important to their futures and incorporated into the design of the scarecrow, with students able to see their creation in all its glory at the show.
“STEM is the future, so it not only teaches the curriculum but life skills as well, so making the scarecrow provided a lot of that, from using hot glue guns to drills.
“We were gifted 30 tickets to view the scarecrow and they got very excited seeing their creation on display to the public.
“They were ecstatic when they won, they were super happy and it’s just so good for these kids to have a win.
“I’m so proud, the judges were amazed at what our students could do, and we were the only ESC school, competing against mainstream schools, and judges could tell all the work was done by the students so I’m just so proud of that.”
