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.

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

Bipedal Bones: Solving a Skeletal Mystery

Grades 5-8
Available September to mid-June

“Dead men tell no tales” but their bones just might!  Students examine and measure skeletal casts of several “mystery” primate bones (including humans and some ancient relatives!) to learn more about the stories individual bones can tell. Who did each mystery bone belong to? Could they walk upright? How do we know?
Key Concepts: growth and development, structure and function, evidence in archaeology

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

Let it Glow: A Study in Antibiotic Resistance

Grade 6-8, 9-12
Attend this program for free! Ask the office about scholarship eligibility.

See how antibiotics work in plain, glowing sight! Do an experiment on the effects of antibiotics on bioluminescent bacteria and investigate how RNA plays a part in it. Participants will go hands-on to streak a petri dish and learn how bacteria are grown and used in microbiology experiments.

Key concepts: genetics, structure, and function, using models, lab techniques

This program is based on research by Kristin Koutmou, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.

Watt's Up With Motor Proteins?

Grades 6-8, 9-12
Available September through January
Attend this program for free! Ask the office about scholarship eligibility.

What are motor proteins and what happens when they don’t work? Use fluorescence, lab equipment, and the scientific process to solve a medical mystery. Answer questions about cell function in this hands-on lab program!

Key Concepts: Cell structure and function, lab techniques, microscopic structures, scientific discoveries, evaluating information.

This program is based on research by Morgan DeSantis, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.

STREAM TABLE WORKSHOPS

  • 30 students
  • 60 minutes
  • $9/person

Price is in addition to Group Admission.

Stream table workshops are available during select dates: November 6-15, March 31-April 3, May 27-30

Students use the museum’s 10-foot stream simulation table to learn about watersheds, rivers, flooding, and landforms! Students work in small groups and record their observations in accompanying student journals. These programs take place in the Community Room. 

Water, Weather, and a River Community

Grades K-3
Where does water come from, and where does it go? Students explore what happens to water when it rains, model flood dangers in a river community, conduct experiments about water flow, and discuss life in and around a river.

How Water Shapes the Land

Grades 2-6
Students discover how flowing water causes erosion and sedimentation, shaping and creating various landforms. They explore how human activities influence erosion and test various methods of erosion control.

Protecting Our Watersheds

Grades 3-8
What is a watershed and why is it important? Students explore how various human activities affect water quality both in a stream and as groundwater.

Scheduling

Scheduling and Pricing

 

 

 

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