The halls of Wareham Elementary School offered students a smorgasbord of enriching experiences during the school’s annual STEAM night on Thursday, May 23. 

STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. The school’s STEAM night showed off work from students and from local organizations. 

In a second floor corridor, students crowded around a cage filled with small chicks. 

“Each spring we hatch chicks in our class,” said Pre-K Teacher Laura Pol. 

Pol said the class hatches chicks as part of its curriculum on life cycles. 

“They’ll live in the classroom for a few more weeks until they start getting a little too tight in there, and then they’ll go to a farm,” she said. 

In the cafeteria, representatives from science and nature-themed organizations such as the Wareham Land Trust, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Wareham Department of Natural Resources set up at tables. 

Cindy Sweetser with the Massachusetts Audubon Society walked kids through a model watershed. 

Wareham is “low on the coast, and all the kids play at the beaches, but they may not realize there’s lots of rivers, and many ponds,” Sweetser said. “And when it rains, water flows to the lowest point, so it’s going to flow into the ocean.”

The model showed how different buildings and drains affected the water’s flow when it rained. 

At a different table, ten-year-old Wareham Elementary School student Logan examined a collection of shells brought by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. 

Logan emphasized “the fact that when you try to hear the ocean in a conch [shell], it’s just your heartbeat echoing.”

Back upstairs, art teacher Nancy Newton showed off her students’ work in her last STEAM night before retirement. 

Newton displayed a wide range of her students’ work, including lava-lamp drawings, and New Year’s Day-themed city skylines from her Special Education students.

“I like to get out of the box,” said Newton. “I get bored really easily, so I don’t usually do the same projects year after year, because my feeling is, if I’m bored, they’re going to be bored.”