March STEM Madness! Upcoming Community Activities

Our fantastic Let's Talk Science volunteers at the University of Guelph will be crazy busy over March Break in local and rural communities, bringing hands on science to all ages of youth (and even their parents!)

Come join us at one of the events below!

Date: Saturday, March 8th

Activity: Hands On Science: Robert Munsch 50 Below Zero Activity (Ages 4-6)

Location: Guelph Public Library Main Branch

Time: 1:30-2:20 pm

Contact: Andrea Curtis at the Guelph Public Library

http://ltsatuog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/march-break-launch-of-our-second-robert.html

Date: Sunday, March 9th

Activity: Hands On Science: Matter Matters (Ages 7-12)

Location: Bruce County Public Library in Kincardine

Time: 1:30-3 pm

Contact: Carolyn McKeeman at the Kincardine Library (519-396-3289)

Date: Wednesday, March 12th

Activity: Chemistry Magic Show (All ages!)

Location: Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre in Southhampton

Time: 15 min shows from 1-3 pm

Contact: Christine Schmidt at the BCM&CC (519-797-2080 ext. 104)   

Date: Wednesday, March 12th

Activity: Hands On Science: Robert Munsch 50 Below Zero Activity (Ages 4-6)

Location: Guelph Public Library East Side Branch

Time: 2:30-3:30

Contact: Andrea Curtis at the Guelph Public Library

http://ltsatuog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/march-break-launch-of-our-second-robert.html

Date: Saturday, March 15 and Sunday, March 16

Activity: Hands On Science at College Royal Open House Weekend (All ages!)

Location: University of Guelph campus (Science Complex, Room 1504)

Time: Sat (9am - 5 pm), Sun (9am - 4pm)

Contact: Let's Talk Science at the University of Guelph (uguelph@letstalkscience.ca)

http://www.collegeroyalsociety.com/open-house.html

** This is one of our biggest 'displays' of the year! College Royal Open House is the largest university run open house in North America, and about 20,000 people visit campus over the weekend to watch tractor pulls, tour labs, do hands on activities -- pretty much anything you can think of! Let's Talk Science run a room of activities for all ages, young and young at heart alike! Come by to chat with a scientist, talk to the Let's Talk Science coordinators, or just try out our fun science demonstrations! **

Let's Talk SPOOKY Science

Let's Talk Science at the University of Guelph ran a booth all weekend at the Elora Fright Fest! 

U of Guelph volunteers were joined by some LTS volunteers from U of Waterloo to offer some special spooky Halloween-themed science demos for kids! Including:

• making coloured or glow-in-the-dark alien snot
• examining the density of 'eye balls'
• creating spooky self-inflating ghost balloons using liquid nitrogen or vinegar & baking soda
• monster toothpaste!
• lots of other fun activities

LTS at U of Guelph volunteers Keith, Heather, Ann (coordinator) and Shuang on Sunday!

LTS at U of Guelph volunteers Katie, Derek and Tanya on Saturday afternoon!

LTS at Waterloo volunteers Grace, Serena and Selina helping at our Let's Talk Science booth on Saturday morning. Photo compliments of Mike Robinson from the Wellington Advertiser: https://twitter.com/WellyAdvertiser/media

Let's Talk Science likes to party!

LTS at Guelph made a VERY special visit on the weekend to a VERY special boy for his VERY special 8th birthday party!

When he grows up, he wants to be a Chemist so our wonderful LTS at Guelph volunteers helped make him a Chemist-for-a-Day and do some fun and exciting Chemistry Magic Show activities with his friends!

Happy Birthday Peter from LTS at the University of Guelph!

April Showers Brings Volunteer Awesomeness! :)

What an amazing semester we just finished. Thank you to all our volunteers for yet another amazing month of activities. Nancy and Amanda were sincerely grateful for help running the All Science Challenge, and for all the help given to make sure our regular classroom visits went off successfully!

A salute to those who ran awesome events in Owen Sound last month! Not only did you commit to four hours of transit time (WOW!), but you were flexible enough to run events with loads of kids on a BOAT! You did such an awesome job, LTS head office featured you on the main site, so check out:

http://www.letstalkscience.ca/news-and-events/news/1223-outreach-sites-team-up-for-science-fair-activities.html

Thanks again to Roman, Matt, Katie, Marshall, Larry, Erin and Heying!

Cheers!

Ann

It's Rural Week!

Whew! We've been so busy lately that it's been hard to keep up with the blog! Stay tuned for another post soon about some of the other amazing things we've been up to!

Our beautiful spring weather has meant the return of rural trips! Now that we don't need to worry about school closures or unsafe road conditions, our volunteers have hit the road, to bring science to kids in three rural communities in this week alone!! Derek, Midori, and Mary paid a return visit to St. Peter's school in Dublin, ON, to teach the grade 1/2 students about simple machines, and to show the kids how to make Cheerio-a-pults (sorry parents :p)!! Bryce and Erin are spending most of the day today in Arthur to discuss why matter matters, to teach the grade 4's about pulleys, and to talk to the kindergartens about why science and math are cool! And Karen and Crystal are off to Maryborough to perform some chemistry magic, to deliver some super science challenges, and to teach the grade 1's about energy in their everyday lives! These three dedicated teams of volunteers have travelled a combined 400 km this week!!! 

Guest Post - Trip to Moosonee and Moose Factory

Jess is an outstanding volunteer who just returned from a week-long volunteer-a-thon in Moosonee and Moose Factory alongside a volunteer from Ottawa! She has written a post about her activities. You can check out a collection of photos on our Picasa!

May 8-10 2011  

From the moment we arrived at the tiny airport just outside the small community of Moosonee, we realized that this was going to be a week full of surprises and new experiences.  Our accommodations were in an area where teachers at the local catholic elementary school mainly lived,  about a 5 minute walk from “downtown” and communities only grocery store.  We arrived early in the afternoon on Sunday, therefore we had a good amount of time to prepare for our first set of presentations the next day.  The next morning we arrived at the docks to catch a water taxi over to Moose Factory.  This town is located on an island accessible by boat in the summer, ice bridge in the winter, and helicopter during the ice freeze-up and thaw outs in the spring and fall.  This means that if a student from Moosonee attends school on the island they take a helicopter to class for around 4 weeks every year! 

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!