Science Activities
Kits Available at UWO
Ancient Machines
Grade: K-4
Bring pyramid-building to life in your classroom. In this workshop, teachers will learn how to create an exciting, inquiry-based challenge that will help students gain an understanding of how simple machines make it easier to move heavy loads.
Biotech Kit
Grade: 7-12
This is a specialized biotechnology kit where students learn about DNA, RNA, and proteins through hands-on experimenting with actual technology that scientists use in laboratories.
Bone Zone
Grade: 3-5
Experience our ‘bone-ified’ activities to discover how our skeletal system provides
protection, support and movement through challenges, demonstrations and role-playing activities. Students build a model hand and test it for strength and stability.
Bright Lights
Grade: 3-4
Where does light come from? How does it travel between a source and our eyes? Learn about light and how it is transmitted, reflected and refracted by materials in our environment. Use this knowledge to make a take home kaleidoscope.
Budding Biologists
Grade: JK-3
How are living things adapted for survival? Through hands-on activities, students will learn about the form and function of insects and birds. Try eating like a bird and build or become an imaginary insect!
Crime Lab
Grade: 5-9
Armed with a list of suspects and clues collected from the scene of the crime, students become forensic scientists trying to solve a mystery. Techniques used include chromatography, fingerprinting and chemical analysis.
DNA Extraction
Grade: 5-12
Become a biotechnologist and learn how scientists extract and use DNA to identify diseases and mutations. Students will extract DNA from a banana, and then run the DNA on an agarose gel.
Dynamic Dinos
Grade: JK-3
How does a scientist determine when and how the dinosaurs lived? Become a palaeontologist and reconstruct a model of a dinosaur. Make inferences about form and function and learn how to tell what a dinosaur might have eaten. Students will make a fossil footprint to take home.
Electrical Engineering
Grade: 6
This kit was put together in conjunction with Hydro One. Students will learn the basics of electrical circuits, electromagnets, and batteries in an inquiry-based learning environment.
Entrepreneurial Science
Grade: 6-9
Students learn about the economics of science by forming companies to design
self-propelled objects. By ‘purchasing’ parts, building and testing their creations, students discover a variety of potential energy sources. Having a novel idea is just the first step in inventing. Turning the idea into a viable product is definitely not easy and may not be inexpensive.
Feast for the Senses
Grade: JK-2
The search for food is on. In this workshop teachers will observe interactive, sensory activities that help students understand how animals use their senses to locate food, one of the keys to survival.
Fluids
Grade: 8
Students will use what they learn about fluids, density, viscosity, liquids vs. gases, and hydraulics to build a catapult that will shoot ping pong balls. Students can then have a competition to see which team's ping pong ball can travel furthest.
Hydration Nation
Grade: 6-9
Students will join the best hydrological research team in Canada, to survey a newly discovered island. They will determine drinking water quality on the island through testing the chemistry and physical properties of the main bodies of water and comparing results to the Canadian drinking water guidelines. Students will make recommendations on which water source could be used for drinking and what should be done with the island.
It's Electrifying
Grade: 4-6
Do electrons come out of both ends of a battery? Why won’t the bulb light? What’s a parallel circuit? Is wood a good conductor or an insulator? Students will explore
these questions and more through fun, hands-on stations.
Magnetic Madness
Grade: JK-3
Through hands-on learning centres the students will determine which things are attracted to magnets and which are not. Explore magnetic attraction and repulsion. (Discover the force field around magnets; Grade 2 and 3 students will create a magnet and make their own compass) or (Students will discover the force field around magnets and make their own compasses).
Matter Matters
Grade: 2
What are the states of matter? How are solids, liquids, and gases different from each other? What happens when you mix a solid and a liquid? What are the properties of liquids and how do we use them in our lives? Students will explore the
properties of liquids and the interactions between solids and liquids in exciting hands-on stations.
Super Science Challenges
Grade: 3-5
Teamwork is essential as students solve these engineering, science and math challenges. Can they design a method to move ping-pong balls without touching them or passing beyond specific boundaries? How many pennies can they get onto a
paper bridge? Designs are improved and tested until the “best” design is determined.
Tectonics Rocks
Grade: 7-9
This workshop takes your class from magma to mountains. Drifting back in time, students will use scientific evidence to put together a puzzle of ‘Pangaea’. Students gain an understanding of plate tectonics by demonstrations of convergent, divergent and transform plate movements. After creating model mountains, students become cartographers by designing and drawing their own topographic map.
Wonders of Weather
Grade: 3-5
In this workshop, students will learn how sun, air and water affect the weather. Students will construct and test weather instruments including a thermometer and an anemometer and compare different types of clouds.
