After visiting a fair most people leave with a stuffed animal or some extra cotton candy.

But at this Saturday’s family fun day in aid of autism services, you will also gain greater awareness about the condition. “We want people to come out, have a good time and enjoy the atmosphere,” said Tamisha Simons, an autism teacher at Prospect Primary.

“Whatever you can think of finding at a fair, you will find that at our family fun day. But it’s also in support of a good cause and will help people to learn something new.”

The event is being hosted by two of the Department of Education’s classrooms for students on the autism spectrum — the Prospect Primary Superheroes and the Dellwood Avengers.

After a successful first run last year, organisers are hoping to make the fun day an annual event.

The Department of Education set up classrooms specifically for students with autism three years ago. There are two other programmes at Paget Primary and West Pembroke Primary.

However, it was not long before the autism teachers realised that there was a lack of information about the disorder within the community.

“Some people hadn’t heard about autism and others didn’t know much about what it was,” Ms Simons said.

“So what we have done is organised a series of events like a fish fry, bake sales and sold cake pops, as well as performed for the Autism Month Proclamation.

“We have made it our mission to help promote autism awareness.

“This event coming up this weekend will help to fund a lot of the programmes we’d like to put on and pay for some of the supplies we need.”

As well as regular activities such as fun castles, a giant slide, bull riding, sumo and bean bag toss games, there will also be an autism trivia game taking place throughout the afternoon. Prizes will also be on offer during the day.

“Some of the answers to the trivia can be found around the field, so everyone has the opportunity to answer,” Ms Simons said.

“There will also be cotton candy, snow balls, Ashley’s Lemonade, Dandy doughnuts, hamburgers and hot dogs, and all different kinds of foods available.”

If people are able to take anything from these events, she hopes that they see that children with autism are just like every other child — they just think and express themselves differently.

“Autism affects their communication and social skills,” she said.

“They also have a lot of repetitive behaviours and we tend to call those stimming [self stimulatory behaviour].

“Whereas we might have a repetitive behaviour like cracking our knuckles or pushing constantly on a pen, someone with autism might have those behaviours, but it’s very exaggerated.

“It tends to be small things for us, but for them it’s bigger things that help them to feel better.

“They also have challenges with communicating. They might be non-verbal, but find other ways to communicate with us by pointing to objects or taking us over to it. It just depends.”

The family fun day is at Prospect Primary School Field on Saturday from 11.30am until 6.30pm.

Admission is free for children under 12; $2 for older children and teens and $5 for adults.