Investigate Labs: Your students will use scientific tools and museum specimens to answer questions and solve problems. Open for short lab activities when available or you can schedule a class workshop!

  • The Nature Lab features hands-on collections inquiry, highlighting specimens from paleontology, zoology, botany, geology, and anthropology. 
  • The Micro Worlds Lab offers opportunities to use microscopes and lab equipment to inquire into molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.   

Stream Table Workshops: Students use the museum’s 10-foot stream simulation table to learn about watersheds, rivers, and landforms!

INVESTIGATE LABS

Hands-on public Investigate Labs where students can dig in and do what scientists do.

  • 30 students
  • 45 minutes
  • $8/person

Price in addition to Group Admission.

Programs available Monday-Friday with limited weekend availability.

Assistive listening devices are available in both Investigate Labs upon request.

Nature Lab Workshops

The Nature Lab is an interactive space providing opportunities for students to answer questions with museum specimens in an engaging environment full of animal displays, plants, rocks, and fossils. Programs help explain the natural world through current research in biodiversity, evolution, ecology, geology, and conservation.

Discovering Dinosaur Adaptations

Grades 1-4

Explore the world of dinosaurs by observing their many adaptations and learn what these adaptations tell us about the lifestyles of these prehistoric animals. From a Triceratops horn to a Camarasaurus vertebra, see what new discoveries are being made by paleontologists and uncover the secret lives of dinosaurs.

Key Concepts: adaptations, fossils, structure and function

This Cycle Rocks

Grades 2-6

Explore the rock cycle through hands-on inquiry and investigation. Discover the difference between igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, and learn about the composition of rocks and minerals.

Key Concepts: rock cycle, types of rocks, minerals

A Species Problem

Grades 5-8

What makes all domestic dogs a single species? And what is a species, anyway? In this program, students work in teams to explore a world of imaginary creatures and how they’re related. What taxonomy rules will you use to organize your creatures? This hands-on experience emphasizes art, group work, and science communication!

Key concepts: speciation, taxonomy

Micro Worlds Lab Workshops

The Micro Worlds lab is an interactive space where students use scientific tools to explore topics such as the biodiversity of microscopic organisms, cells, genetics, and developmental biology. Students learn about current research on how the smallest organisms can have large impacts on our lives.

Disease Detectives

Grades 5-8

Discover zoonosis: how diseases can jump from animals to us.  Learn and use techniques that epidemiologists use to track down the causes of diseases and keep us safe.

Key Concepts: pathogens, animal vectors, data interpretation, data-based arguments

Scheduling