Rural outreach in Dublin, Ontario AND a major milestone!

Dublin, Ontario is a small town about 90 minutes away from Guelph.  A team of four volunteers braved early morning traffic and snowy roads to visit the grade 1 and 2 students at St. Patrick's to show them how much fun science can be!

The grade 2's learned how the familiar structures in a playground - slides, merry-go-rounds, and teeter-totters - are really simple machines! They built playground models to show off to their friends and families! The grade 1's learned about structures, and tested whether a suspension bridge was stronger than one without support wires (dental floss!). Then they built geodisic domes using only newspaper!

The kids and the volunteers all had a blast, as evidenced by the photos passed along by the teacher!

Nicole showing how a playground is really a collection of simple machines.

The dedicated volunteers - Sonya, Jan, Mary, and Nicole.

What makes this trip even more special is that, when we tallied up the number of youth reached in this visit, we realized that we had hit a milestone... we have now reached our goal for number of youth reached in the 2010-2011 school year! That's right: as of today, Let's Talk Science in Guelph has reached over 1,500 kids!! This amazing feat would not have been possible without the sincere dedication of volunteers like Mary, Sonya, Nicole, and Jan, as well as the enthusiasm of our community and educator partners!

Guelph Let's Talk Science hanging out with Stephen Harper!!

Yup, that incredible title is true: on Friday, March 11th a team of LTS volunteers from the U of G and UWaterloo visited St. Ignatius school here in Guelph for a normal, run of the mill roller coaster engineering challenge with the grade 6's that culminated in PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER dropping by to test out the kids' fantastic designs. No big deal. That's just how we roll here in Guelph.

This activity was followed by an incredible announcement: the PM has dedicated $2,000,000 across 4 years to Let's Talk Science in Southern Ontario through Fed-Dev Ontario's Youth STEM program!!!! How ridiculously fantastic is that?!?!?

This incredible announcement was front page news here in Guelph, and it was also covered by several national news sources and at the PM's own website.  Plenty of photos are coming soon so stay tuned!

News articles about the announcement and the PM's visit:

• The Prime Minister's website
• The Guelph Mercury
• CTV News

Edit:  Photos after the jump!  To see all of the high-res photos, check out our picasa album!

Mr. Landoni's amazing grade 6's.. with a special guest!

Let's Talk Science at College Royal!

College Royal is a huge open house that is held each year at the University of Guelph.  There are 12 days of activities, lectures, and friendly competitions for students and the community, and it culminates in a weekend-long open house where clubs and organizations at the university present booths and activities to show the community what we're all about!

This year, for the first time ever, Let's Talk Science will be running activities all weekend long at College Royal!! Come find us in MacKinnon 228, where we will be running hands-on activities for kids of all ages on a rotating schedule all weekend long! Our schedule is:


Saturday:
9:30–10:30 am: Super Science Challenges AND Feast for the Senses
11 am – 12:30 pm: Guts AND Crime Scene
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm: Super Science Challenges AND Feast for the Senses
3–4 pm: Guts AND Crime Scene

Sunday:
10:30–11:30 am: Super Science Challenges AND Feast for the Senses
12:30–2 pm: Guts AND Crime Scene
2:30–3:30 pm: Super Science Challenges AND Feast for the Senses



Super Science Challenges and Crime Scene activities are aimed at ages 8–14, and Feast for the Senses  and Guts are aimed at ages 4–7.


Check out the main College Royal website at www.collegeroyal.uoguelph.ca to see all of the other fun, family-friendly, hands-on activities that will be going on - and make sure to stop by and visit us, too!