Requesting a Visit & Available Hands-on Activities – Lets Talk Science

Last updated September 28 2023:

Let’s Talk Science has resumed all in-person outreach and volunteer activities since January 2023 following the COVID-19 lockdown.

We have added multiple activities this year, and as we have adapted many activities for a virtual format over the course of the pandemic, you may now choose to book workshops in either a physical or a virtual format. Please consult the descriptions below to confirm the availability of both formats.

**Please note that this website is regularly updated.

At Let’s Talk Science University of Toronto St. George, we have numerous ‘ready-to-go’ interactive activity kits that our volunteers can bring into the classroom, providing educational and hands-on activities for students from Kindergarten to Grade 12. B

Please take a moment to browse through the wide gammut of workshops offered at our site described further down this page and determine if any of these activities match the needs of your classroom. Before making a selection, please consult the spreadsheet below (or here for a full view) where a near-real-time view of the availability of our various workshops over time is displayed (updated within 2 business days of requests submission and confirmation). Please be mindful of the availability of workshops prior to workshop booking.

Once you are ready to make a selection, please complete the following form. Please also note that if there is a specific topic for which you do not see a prepared activity on the list, we may still have activities for that subject area or we may have a volunteer who is eager to develop an activity for your classroom so please make note of this through this same form.

We ask that each educator make one classroom visit request at a time in order to allow an equal division of our volunteers. While we try and accommodate as many requests as possible, please note that we receive a high volume of requests. Some requests may therefore not be fulfilled.

Once the appropriate number of volunteers who express interest in delivering the interactive workshop are available, we will notify you to confirm the date and time.

**Please also note that requests from schools in the TDSB and other schools requiring that our volunteers obtain an up-to-date vulnerable sector screening (VSS) may take additional time to be fulfilled, thank you for your understanding.

Legend:

Light blue or white (zero) cells are available.
Black cells are unavailable.
Yellow cells are potentially booked (to avoid double-booking, please avoid selecting these activities on these dates).
Green cells (non-zero) are workshop-dates which have been confirmed to be reserved (activity unavailable on this date).

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Early Years Kits

Bounce and Roll
Wings of Discovery(R) Early Years Kit (ages 3 to 6): Balls can be bounced, rolled, kicked and thrown. Balls can be fun! In this hands-on workshop, children will explore the properties of different balls, how they roll and how they bounce. In the process, they will develop an understanding of energy, motion and forces.

Budding Biologists (Virtual friendly)
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! For Kindergarten to grade 3.

Chromatography Butterfly (Virtual friendly)
Where the physical sciences intersect with the arts, Students will investigate and learn about an important technique in sample extraction/purification known as chromatography. For grades Kindgergaten to grade 3.

Climate Change: Planet Protectors I (Virtual friendly)
In this age environmental instability, it is increasingly important that our youth become familiar with the problem at hand and how they may make a change toward a more sustainable future. Students are introduced to composting and the anatomy of plants. For Kindergarten to grade 3.

Dynamic Dinos
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. For Kindergarten to grade 3.

Feast for the Senses
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. For Kindergarten to grade 1.

Magnet Madness (Currently unavailable)
Through hands-on learning centres the students will determine which things are attracted to magnets and which are not. Explore magnetic attraction and repulsion. Students will discover the force field around magnets and make their own compasses. For Kindergarten to grade 3.

Why Live Here
Wings of Discovery(R) Early Years Kit (ages 3 to 6): Animals live almost everywhere – from ponds and forests to towns and tundra. All living things share the Earth. In this hands-on workshop, children will be guided through various explorations that will allow them to co-construct knowledge and develop skills about different animal habitats, including a habitat’s role in providing sources of food and shelter. In the process, children will develop an understanding of the needs of living things and how habitats meet these needs.

Elementary/Middle School Kits

Ancient Machines
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. For grades 4-6.

The Bone Zone
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. For grades 4-6.

Bright Lights Big Science (Virtual friendly)
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. For grades 4-6.

Climate Change: Planet Protectors II (Virtual friendly)
In this age of environmental instability, it is increasingly important that our youth become familiar with the problems at hand and how we may make a change toward a more sustainable future. Students learn about how we may quantify our environmental impact through carbon footprinting Students are introduced to the important physical and mental health effects of climate change. For grades 4-6.

Climate Change: Planet Protectors III (Virtual friendly)
In this age of environmental instability, it is increasingly important that our youth become familiar with the problems at hand and how we may make a change toward a more sustainable future. Students learn about the health and psychological impact of climate change on the population (e.g., climate anxiety). For grades 7-9.

Code and Go Mice
Students will learn the basics of programing using a Code and Go Robot Mouse which can be programmed with travel directions to navigate through mazes. For grades 1-6.

Coding Ozobots
Students will learn the basics of programing using an Ozobot robot which can be programmed with travel directions to navigate through mazes (this is slighty more advanced than the Code and Go Robot Mouse). For grades 4-8.

Crime Lab
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. For grades 5-9.

Driving Towards the Future
Students will learn about the current topic of self-driving cars and use it as a platform to learn about the big ideas behind computational thinking – how to break down a problem into steps, and how to create a process that can be followed to reach a goal. This hands-on workshop does not require the use of a computer. For grades 4-10.

Entrepreneurial Science
Students will learn about the economics of science by forming a company to design a self-propelled object. They will work together on allocating budget for materials required for their invention. They will also be learning about the physics behind the energy sources and the types of propulsion required for their self-propelled objects. For grades 4-10.

Fight or Flight: The Science of Stress (Virtual friendly)
Students will be introduced to the nervous system and especially about the science behind the stress responses. For grades 4-10.

Hydration Nation (Virtual friendly)
At 50 to 70% of our body composition, water is crucial to our survival. In this workshop, students will test water samples from a newly discovered island and make recommendations regarding the best source for drinking water. They will conduct pH tests and a water quality analysis to determine the quality of the samples from a lake, river and bog. They will look at the effects of watersheds, erosion and deposition on drinking water quality. They will measure the turbidity of the water samples using a Secchi disk and test filter materials to clean the samples. Participants will also construct hydrometers to test the density and determine salinity of the samples. Lastly, they will learn about the effects of oil spills on the environment. For grades 7-10.

It’s Electrifying! (Currently unavailable)
Students gain a basic understanding of electricity by experimenting with electrical circuits, conductors, insulators and electromagnets. for grades 4-6.

Matter Matters (Virtual friendly)
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. For grade 1-3.

Rube Goldberg (Currently unavailable)
The point of a Rube Goldberg machine is to do a simple task in a complicated way. For this to work, you need to consider how energy will be transferred throughout your machine and how simple machines might help your machines to work efficiently. For grades 5-9.

Sportology (Currently unavailable)
What do baseball, Frisbee and skateboarding have in common? They all have science in them! This will be a half-day of fun, games, and learning about the science in your sports. For grades 4-7.

Steam League (Virtual friendly)
Our site has developed a series of virtual-friendly activities called the STEAM League. It consists of a live viewing of a themed interview with professionals in the STEAM fields discussing their careers, as well as inter-mixed activities to introduce/discuss the science their careers involve. It spans a wide range of topics from space sciences to the science of Iced cream and frozen treats! (you can visit our Youtube channel to watch some of the interviews we present the students between activities: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSP5K0wIViUeMGOAgLXrHea5tgK2bFlzC). For grades 4-12.

Super Science Challenges
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. For grades 4-6.

Tectonics Rock!
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. For grades 7-10.

High School Kits

Air Forces: The Science of Flight (Virtual friendly)
Air Forces explores the history of flight, basics of forces, the four forces of flight, and how Newton’s Laws of motion apply to flight. The final activity challenges students to design the ‘best paper aircraft ever’ based on the Paperang(TM) design. This kit includes PowerPoint slides and is intended for grades 9-12.

Biotechnology
This kit has the materials to run agarose DNA gels, as well as set up PCR reactions, extract DNA, make models of DNA and a ‘Whodunnit’ presentation. There are powerpoint slides to accompany this kit and it can be tailored for grades 7-12.

Climate Change: Planet Protectors IV (Virtual friendly)
In this age of environmental instability, it is increasingly important that our youth become familiar with the problems at hand and how we may make a change toward a more sustainable future. Students are introduced to important societal concepts such as environmental racism (whereby discrimination leads to disproportionate subjection of certain subpopulations to the negative impacts of climate change) and the climate activism performed in response. For grades 10-12.

Fight or Flight: The Science of Stress (Virtual friendly)
Students will be introduced to the nervous system and especially about the science behind . For grades 4-10.

Stem Cell Science and Ethics (Currently unavailable)
Based on the annual StemCellTalks symposium for high school students, we have various stem cell science and ethics talk and case studies for debates and discussions about stem cells. Developed by the volunteers and coordinators at our site so you get a unique experience and visit by stem cell researchers in Toronto! Intended for grades 9-12.

Trip to Mars (Virtual friendly)
In this introduction to Python language computer programing, Students are tasked with performing all the computations necessary pertaining to orbital kinetics to launch a rocket with the mission of landing on Mars. No need to install Python onto the computers, a web-based version known as Jupyter Notebook will be used. For grades 7-12.

Coming Soon…

Let’s Make Science
An activity delving into the development of “maker” skills, teaching youth the basics of mechatronics from computer aided design (CAD), to fabrication and electronics enabling their various future scientific endeavours. Intended for grades 9-12.