Peds Palooza is an interactive immersion activity created to fill an identified gap prior to the specialty clinical experience. Nursing students preparing for pediatric clinicals felt nervous and uncomfortable with their limited experience and lack of exposure with the pediatric population. The Peds-Palooza day introduces commonly used skills and assessments students may experience. It involves thirty stations of active, hands-on learning, interdisciplinary volunteers, group work, live simulations, and are self-guided, or faculty led. Fall 2024 Peds-Palooza included members from the Evansville health department, Respiratory Therapists from Deaconess Gateway, Registered Dietitian and Nutrition students, a live simulation actor, and nursing faculty. Students gain experience with reviewing nutritional needs, fluid assessments, respiratory assessments, medication safety, pediatric vaccines, weight based medication calculations and growth and development milestones and other priority skills before going into clinical setting to decrease the students fear and improve clinical outcomes. Additionally, recruitment of our community partners from clinical locations builds on the concept of the team approach in pediatric nursing. The addition of these team members also supports our interprofessional learning goals. Recent student feedback stated that interactions with these professionals allowed them to feel more comfortable in approaching other healthcare team members while in clinical. This outcome supports objectives of having communication within inter-professional teams and fostering mutual respect. This teaching method over the last 3 cohorts has proven to be an efficient way to reduce the gap prior to clinical and decrease anxiety. By introducing new priority concepts early and reviewing previously learned nursing skills with a pediatric focus in preparation for clinical startup, we have successfully bridged many of the concerns expressed. Additionally, this fosters a sense of team within the cohort, involves kinesthetic learning activities with active learning techniques and contextualizes information with our community partner’s support. The purposes of this presentation are to share the activity and get the audience thinking about increasing the use of simulations and additional benefits of incorporating interprofessional activities. Listeners may review how this format of interactions may be adapted or replicated for their needs. Details: Simultaneous skill stations and interactive simulations with live feedback, guidance, and support. Led by faculty, alumni, community volunteers or set up to be self-guided active learning. The students have a packet with brief descriptions of each station and QR code links on the packet to short videos or web pages. Locations and times are all preset as scheduled appointments which has proven to be the best model for an efficient workflow through each station for the volunteers and faculty. Details are reviewed in class the day prior, along with expectations, objectives, and appointment schedule. Debriefing held afterwards and further feedback is given. Challenges- minimize time commitment from volunteers, maintain small groups, space availability, student absences; adapt to the change of schedule. Lessons learned- smoother with reviewing schedule day before, details for each station, discuss time management.