Nominations are open 1 March-31 May 2026.

Start Developing Your Project Now
Using Little Scientists' project inquiry cycle & project guide (and the questions in this form), you can start planning and developing your project with your children now. This will give your children ample time to explore their project's research question, ideas, and experiments over many weeks or months.

Before you start a project, have you undertaken a suitable amount of STEM professional development? To support this, our Online Workshop: Inquiry-Based STEM Projects will support educators to co-develop and document a high-quality STEM project with their children.

How Your Project Will Be Assessed
The judges will assess your project based on how child-led the inquiry was and how central STEM learning was throughout the process. They will also evaluate how effectively your project addressed each of the six stages of the project inquiry cycle outlined below.

Stage 1. If the research question was sparked by the children.

Stage 2. How children’s ideas and hypotheses were gathered and used. (Documentation upload required.)

Stage 3. How children were supported to lead and engage in research and experimentation. (Documentation upload required.)

Stage 4. How children were supported to observe and describe what was happening.

Stage 5. How children documented their results. (Documentation upload required.)

Stage 6. How children were supported to reflect on what they had learned at the conclusion of the project. (Documentation upload required.)

Documenting Your Project

High‑quality documentation is central to your inquiry‑based STEM project. Ensure you
collect documentation incrementally as you move through each stage of the project. Your everyday tools — Floorbooks, daily reflections, jottings, observations, annotated samples, photos, videos, learning stories, etc. — are sufficient and naturally capture children’s investigations over time without adding extra work. Learn more about high-quality project documentation.

Writing Your Responses
If English is your second language, please don’t worry — your writing style isn't being assessed. What matters is that you:

Answer each question clearly.
Use as many direct examples and quotes from the children as possible.
Provide detailed responses to paint a rich, vivid picture of your project for the judges.

Save & Edit Later
This form allows you to save a draft and return to it later. To do that, click "Save Nomination" at the bottom of this page, then click "Skip Create an Account" at the bottom of the form, and then enter your email address to have a draft link emailed to you. This is entirely managed by JotForm (not Little Scientists) so to be safe, we'd recommend drafting and finalising your responses in a word doc before submitting via this form.

For questions or support, please contact awards@littlescientists.org.au or (02) 8080 0065.

Section 1. Your service or classroom

Full name of the person managing this nomination. *

First NameLast Name

Your title, e.g. educator, teacher, educational leader, director, etc. *

Name of your service or classroom/school. Please write this as you would want it to appear on an award.*

Your best email address to contact regarding this nomination*

Please double check this for typos.

Your best phone number*

Please include the area code if a landline.

Address of your service or classroom/school*

Street Address

Street Address Line 2

CityState / Province

Postal / Zip Code

Service or school website or social media page (if you have one)

Name of service director or lead classroom teacher (if this is not you)

First NameLast Name

Section 2. Your inquiry-based STEM project

Before proceeding, please ensure you have already developed, documented, and completed an inquiry-based STEM project with your children over several weeks or months.

Project Context

How many educators worked on the project?*

How many children worked on the project?*

How old were the children who worked on the project? Select all that apply.*

How regularly did the children work on the project?

What was the duration of your project? An inquiry-based STEM project should take place over many weeks or months.*

Project Stage 1. Select a research question sparked by the children.

An inquiry-based STEM project explores a single research question. What is the research question that your inquiry-based STEM project explored? (Max 10 words)*

Little Scientists will use this as the title of your project.

Which children’s questions or interests sparked your research question? Explain how the project came about. (Max 150 words)*

In order for your project to be meaningful and captivating for the children, your research question should be sparked by the children or strongly inspired by their interests.

(Optional) Upload documentation that helps to illustrate the question or interest that inspired your project. Combine multiple files into a single file & title the file "ServiceName Stage 1"