Once Upon a Worm covers topics on the senses and living/non-living things. Appropriate for pre-primary, primary, grade 1 or 2 this workshop is tiered to student learning objectives and abilities. Guided by our Science Educators, students in small groups observe and, if comfortable, handle our live Red Wiggler worms.

45-minutes

Explore the natural forces of motion teamed with a simple machine essential for rolling. We’re Wheely Moving challenges students to work as a group to complete two engineering tasks. This workshop about relative motion encourages students to think about design and purpose.

45-minutes

Raise your sails to explore water displacement and shipbuilding. Grade 3 Bluenosers’ will race to complete engineering and design challenges in this workshop. Is your boat built for speed or built to haul and more importantly built to float?

45-minutes

Make some noise exploring the science of sound. Using everything from Slinkys to tuning forks to resonating bowls, students will learn how sounds travel as waves and are affected by different materials. Through hands-on, ears-on activities, students will learn to identify the transmitter, medium, and receiver needed to make a sound.

45-minutes

Prepare to travel through time by revealing the hidden secrets of the past with the discovery of fossils. Learn the process of fossilization and the role weathering and erosion plays in mineralization. Students will make their own casts of real fossils to take home.

1-hour -Specialty Workshop

Solve a gardening challenge using simple machines! After our Science Educator introduces the many types of simple machines we use every day, students will put them to work, building a gardening plot and planting a crop.

45-minutes

Be prepared to get slimed as we explore the properties of matter. Students get messy as they conduct experiments on physical and chemical changes to matter. This 1-hour workshop has a fun take home for students.

1-hour

Join one of our educators for a visceral guided tour of the digestive tract and your breakfast’s journey through it. This 45-minute interactive show gets everyone participating in following food from the beginning to the very end of the digestive system.

45-minutes

Explore current static electricity in this jam-packed 1-hour workshop. Groups of students are challenged to hook up simple, series and parallel circuits on our circuit boards. Students get an up-close look at how positive static electricity can be with the Van de Graaff.

1-hour

Why can planes go up, up, and away? Achieving human flight was a trial and error process—and we will walk through it all. Individually, students follow the scientific method, drawing conclusions about craft design based on the forces of flight.

45-minutes

Take your tech education to the moon with Sphero! This workshop exposes students to simple computer coding and engineering concepts behind space exploration, programming and calibrating Sphero to explore our simulated Martian base camp and its surroundings. Groups will be challenged to think like an astronaut and a computer programmer to complete a series of challenges in a conceptual mission to mine and colonize Mars. Group challenges include securing the perimeter of your Martian basecamp, stopping an alien attack, rescuing a trapped miner.

1-hour; specialty workshop.

Things heat up in this workshop, which covers the three ways heat is transferred. Student groups are on a mission to battle heat loss and construct the most efficient home. Houses are tested with an infrared camera and design efforts are compared.

1-hour

Students will go microscopic as they learn about the differences between a plant cell and an animal cell. The workshop also teaches students how to prepare slides of plant cell specimens to view under the microscope, how to best observe small animal cells from prepared slides, and to identify different cell structures. Onions are used in this workshop.

1-hour; specialty workshop.

Shine up your lens and get  ready to dissect a real pig eye. In this hands-on workshop, you will learn about the structures that make vision possible, why we have a natural blind-spot, and how a pig’s eyes compare to our own. Tiered for grade 8 or biology students. Thank you to Getaway Farms, with whom this workshop would not be possible.

1-hour; specialty workshop: must book 3-weeks in advance

Join us as we look up at the Halifax sky and discover what’s out in space and why the night is so dark. Prepare for take-off as we go on a 20-minute adventure to explore twinkling stars and our favourite neighbour, the Moon!

20-minutes

Explore the changes happening all around you, as the sun goes down and the stars come out! Join us as we find patterns in the sky, learn about what creates a day and the seasons, and how these cycles affect other living things and our environment.

30-minutes