Wednesday was the first day of NZ International Science Festival’s Nanofest, a smaller week-long science festival held on the alternate year to their larger festival.
The last day of the festival is tomorrow in the Skinner Annex, at the Tūhura Otago Museum.
"The level of enthusiasm has been exciting to me.
Ms Clarkson showed the children how she drew bugs, got them to draw some as well and showed them how to take part in "observology".
Observology is a term coined by Ms Clarkson after her love of looking really closely at the little bits of nature that were often overlooked.
"The more interested they get, the more fun facts I got to tell the kids, like how many tentacles does a slug have?
"Some guessed one tentacle, some guess 5000 — slugs actually have four tentacles."
She said explaining the beauty of nature and giving children hard facts in a fun way helped bring a new generation of scientists through the door.
NZ International Science Festival associate director Andrea Liberatore said showing science was a fun way to bring science to the minds of primary-aged pupils during the summer holidays.
"My favourite activities are the workshops — we’ve learnt how to play with electricity in a safe way during our ‘squishy circuit’ workshop and learning about chain reactions."
One of the festival’s highlights has been New Zealand’s 10th meteorite which was recovered by a team of geologists in March.
