St Carlo Borromeo Catholic Primary School: Inventions from Nature

Turning Questions About Invention Into a Creative Learning Experience

What is the difference between an invention and an innovation? Where do inventors find their ideas? And what can the natural world teach us about designing something new?

These were some of the questions that helped shape Dya Australia’s collaboration with St Carlo Borromeo Catholic Primary School.

After the school approached Dya Australia late last year, we worked together to develop a creative learning experience for approximately 80 Year 3 students. The result was an Inventions from Nature incursion that connected the students’ exploration of invention and innovation with observation, creative thinking and hands-on making.

The Learning Context

St Carlo Borromeo Catholic Primary School was exploring a series of questions with its students:

• What is the difference between an invention and an innovation?
• What are some of the greatest inventions and innovations over time?
• How have they changed the way people live?
• Why do inventors design and create new and better things?
• What process do inventors go through?
• Where do inventors get their ideas?

Rather than treating these questions only as topics for discussion, the collaboration created an opportunity for students to explore them through a practical creative experience.

Dya’s Approach

Dya Australia’s Inventions from Nature program provided a way to connect these questions with the natural world.

Nature is full of shapes, structures, movements and systems that can become starting points for new ideas. During the workshop, students were encouraged to observe more closely, consider what they noticed and use those observations as inspiration for their own creative thinking.

The experience brought together questioning, observation, imagination and making, giving students an opportunity to move from exploring existing ideas to developing ideas of their own.

Inventions from Nature

The workshop encouraged students to consider the relationship between nature and human invention.

Rather than beginning with a finished answer, students could begin with observation. A natural feature, shape, movement or structure could become the starting point for thinking about something new.

This process supported the broader questions the school had already identified around where ideas come from and how inventors move from inspiration towards creating something.

What We Observed

Across the incursion, students had the opportunity to investigate nature as a source of ideas and translate their observations into creative responses.

The hands-on format allowed the approximately 80 Year 3 students to engage with the topic through making as well as discussion. Instead of invention remaining an abstract concept, students could explore how observation and imagination can contribute to the development of an idea.

The workshop also demonstrated how art and creative thinking can sit alongside broader classroom inquiry, providing another way for students to investigate a question and communicate their thinking.

From Curiosity to Creation

The St Carlo Borromeo Catholic Primary School collaboration began with questions.

Those questions helped shape an experience where students could look more closely at the world around them, consider how ideas develop and explore invention through a creative process.

For Dya Australia, this is an important part of designing education experiences: working with schools to understand what students are exploring and finding meaningful ways for creative thinking and hands-on learning to become part of that journey.

Explore Dya Australia’s Education Programs to discover creative learning experiences for schools.