October 2023: The Raine Study booth activities at the Telethon Family Festival on Sunday, 22 October drew 500 curious kids.
Thousands of people took advantage of free Transperth transport to join the festivities in Wellington Street including free carnival rides, entertainment and science education.
As a grateful Telethon beneficiary, this event provides a great opportunity for the Raine Study to showcase how the generous donations from West Australians are spent.
Visitors to our booth learned how the Raine Study does life-changing research into kids’ health and how, with Telethon’s support, we are now recruiting third generation participants.
Fun science activities gave budding scientists a glimpse into what life is like as a medical researcher. Water beads in large jars of red coloured water represented what healthy blood looks like under a microscope, with staff on hand to explain how Raine Study scientists extract so much great information from blood and other samples.
Wearing a lab coat, kids took blood (red water) and urine (yellow water) samples to the lab tech where they were shown how to divide their sample into smaller sample tubes using a pipette.
Other fun hands-on activities included ball throws to blood pressure checks. Kids measured their height on charts and hand strength, squeezing a Dynamometer as hard as they could, while sit and reach tests evaluated the flexibility of their hamstrings.
Take home goodies included certificates of their results, bubble wands, Raine Study tear drop squishies and bounce balls.