Workshops for elementary school

Mackenzie School invited us to lead short workshops with their elementary school groups as part of their Science and Literature Week.

This was an opportunity for small children to get their first contact with biotechnology, handling advanced lab equipment, like the micropipettes.

To bring a joyful approach to these workshops, we chose the Dog Drool extension activity as our main practice, and we used the adaptation for paper chromatography we learned from Drew Spacht, from ABE Central Ohio.

The activities started in the school`s auditorium, with some children being invited to come up the stage and help us investigate the “drool” from our four dogs, and then we gave a kit with a disposable pipette, a “sample from the crime scene”, and filter paper and plastic cups for the teachers to finish the investigation in their classrooms. In total, there were 392 children, spanning from grades 1 to 5, and 16 teachers impacted by this event.