Can be done at any nearby forest, stream, field or beach (different themes available).
Join Nanaimo Science for a guided nature walk, where students can explore local ecosystems up close! Our knowledgeable staff will meet your class at a nature spot near your school, bringing ID guides and binoculars to help students discover and learn about local wildlife. These 60 minute “walk and talks” are an engaging way to connect with nature, encouraging observation, inquiry, and curiosity.
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
Can be done on school grounds, or off-site at nearby treed areas
Learn about tree anatomy, and how to use their features to identify them and enjoy looking at specimens.
Younger students will take part in leaf rubbings and tree games; while older students will learn about hormones in trees, and their function.
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
Recommended sites: Departure Bay, Sebastian Beach, Neck Point Park.
Meet us at a local beach at low tide to explore the intertidal zone! Use our dip nets, ID guides and microscopes to observe creatures, seaweed, rocks and more.
Prices begin at $150/hour for 25 students
Recommended time is 90-120 minutes at the beach
This Science on the Move program is available at Pipers Lagoon, Westwood Lake, Long Lake/Loudon Park, Aspengrove or Island ConnectEd schools.
Meet us at one our outdoor mapped spaces for a scavenger hunt all about using compasses, map interpretation, and orienteering.
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for classrooms or multipurpose rooms.
Students will be presented with a variety of safe solutes and solvents and use experiments and deductive reasoning to determine what their “mysterious” chemical components are.
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for classrooms or multipurpose rooms.
During this program, students will discover the building blocks of a circuit: a power source, a conductive path, and an electrical load (motor). Students will adapt their learning from a Jitterbug to a Doodlebot who will draw on its own!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for classrooms or multipurpose rooms.
Learn what makes some bugs insects & the important role they play in our ecosystem. Inspect insects under microscopes & be bees in a pollination game!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for classrooms or multipurpose rooms.
Learn about salmon’s anatomy, life cycle and role in the food web. Older students will also focus on internal anatomy, while younger students will play salmon/predator tag!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for classrooms or multipurpose rooms.
This program will introduce making observations while students learn to use digital microscopes.
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for outdoor spaces, such as the school yard or garden. Indoor options are possible but please note that this is a messy program!
Students will build their own terrarium, learning about the oxygen cycle and the hydrologic cycle in a closed system. An introduction to biomes will also take part for the class, with a self-sorting game. Students will discuss the needs of plants, and learn about how differences in soil, water, and light quality can impact their successful growth.
This is a premium program, $40 will be added for materials.
This Science on the Move program is best suited to indoor building in the classroom, followed by launching outdoors on a field, or indoors in a gymnasium.
Learn about parabolic trajectories in this fun workshop! Students will be lead through a step-by-step building of their foam rockets (a take-home), and learn how to launch them safely. Moving to the launch site, students will measure how far their rockets fly. For teachers interested in teaching graphing, data sheets will be provided to record angle of launch vs. distance for a follow-up activity!
Prices begin at $300 for 25 students with each additional student costing $20.
This Science on the Move program is best suited for classrooms or multipurpose rooms.
These mini bots are a great introduction to coding! Using colour codes with markers and paper, students can program Ozobots to follow paths, change speed and turn!
Currently a maximum of 22 Ozobots are available at once; please consider this before making a booking!
Prices begin at $150 for 22 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for a classroom or library.
Using real specimens, learn about local species, such as a bear, raccoon, and beaver.
Students will learn about different physiological adaptations and make hypotheses based on attributes seen in each skull.
Gentle hands-on activity!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is well-suited to a classroom, library or multipurpose room.
Explore anatomy with our dis-articulated teaching skeleton! Adaptable to many grades, even kindergarten!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for a large classroom or multipurpose room.
Learn about lift! Students will build a simple whirlygig to consider wind resistance then make flying creations for the wind tunnel!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best suited for large empty classroom, multipurpose room, or gymnasium.
Design and challenge your students with hundreds and hundreds of KEVA blocks, and Nanaimo Science guiding your creations!
This program is also well-suited to combined classes, or big/little-buddy classes!
Prices begin at $150 for 25 students
This Science on the Move program is best hosted in the classroom or library.
In this program, students will play with patterns and unique geometrical shapes. Students will learn about fractals, build a teleidoscope, fold a Mobius strip and a hexahexaflexagon.
*Follow up activity: Salt pendulum plans
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
This Science on the Move program is best suited to outdoor spaces such as the school yard/garden area.
Explore the world of creepy crawlers, what makes something a bug vs an insect, what roles do insects play in our ecosystems? In this program students will learn about the anatomy of insects, observe specimens under our microscopes, and play a pollination game to understand the importance of leaving flowers for the bees!
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
School blacktop/yard during early fall, spring, and early summer months
During this program, students will explore bubbles, play with bubble mixture, create wands, learn about two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes, discover what makes bubbles stick together and float away, and have fun with super-sized bubble creations.
*Follow up activity: Advanced bubble blowing video, story book recommendation
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
School blacktop/yard during early fall, spring, and early summer months
In this program students will learn how to safely enjoy the unique properties of dry ice. Students will learn about the various states of matter, explore vortices with our air cannon, and build their own model cannon to try out.
*Follow up activity: For in-school programs, teachers will get to retain the remaining dry ice; we will share a recipe for ice cream making.
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20. This is a premium program, $40 will be added for materials.
Marshes/ponds, creeks/streams, garden areas, or school yard
During this program, students will explore their environment on a microscopic level. Aquatic samples will be collected using nets and digital microscopes will be used to inspect features and identify invertebrates with our ID sheets. Students may have the opportunity to prepare a paper microscope slide to view the stomata in plant leaves.
*Follow up activity: Microscopic images of everyday objects guessing game (PDF slideshow)
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
Colliery Dam or other heavily forested area during late fall/early winter months
In this program, students will learn about the fungi kingdom and the life cycle of mushrooms. They will walk through forested areas and identify mushrooms with our ID sheets, learn how to make a spore print and dissect (grocery store) mushrooms.
*Follow up activity: spore prints, book recommendation
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
School blacktop
Students will learn about the problem microplastics have on the environment and take part in an hands-on sieving activity. Discussions about bioaccumulation and decomposition will occur with a trivia game about the amount of time common items take to decompose that can be done as a group activity (while social distancing). We will end with an oil spill activity challenging student to clean up the spill using different techniques.
*Follow up activity: Class-wide plastic challenge
Prices begin at $200 for 10 students with each additional student costing $15. Free for some grade 6 classes, teachers should consult with their Principals for more information about district wide opportunities.
Pipers Lagoon, Westwood Lake, can also be done at school yards or other green spaces
During this program, students will learn how to interpret different maps and be introduced to compass use. Students will use the compasses in a “treasure hunt”, walk and map a small environment for its land formation, and learn how to interpret various maps. A geocaching activity may be possible depending on location, and discussion about global positioning system (GPS) coordinates could also be discussed.
*Follow up activity: create a class geocache, map your school ground/neighbourhood.
Begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
During this program, students will discover the building blocks of a circuit: a power source, a conductive path, and an electrical load (motor). Students will tinker around with a simple circuit to make a motor spin and for older grades will adapt their learning from a “jitterbug” to a “scribbling machine” or a “bristlebot”.
*Follow up activity: Circuits Kahoot! Quiz
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
School yard/Sports field
In this program students will build elastic-powered rockets, learn about transfer of forces from potential to kinetic energy, tinker with and test their designs. Once ready to launch, students will track the rockets’ trajectories and consider how different angles of launch impact the rockets’ trajectories.
*Follow up activity: Origami rockets, data collection sheets.
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
Our chemistry program offers students a variety of hands-on learning opportunities from understanding acids and bases, to mixtures and solutions, and discovering polymers. This program is designed to be safe without fumes, harsh compounds or risks to students.
*Follow up activity: Crystal growing instructions
In this program, students will learn about programming simple robots and use Ozobots™ to discover coding. Students will combine codes to to navigate their Ozobot through mazes and challenge themselves to build their own codes.
*Follow up activity: Offline coding activity
Outdoor education content is flexible and covers many topic areas and can be facilitated on your school property or a nearby park. Also, we can direct you to a grant that can cover costs for these lessons.
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20.
School yard
Students will build their own terrarium, learning about the water cycle in a closed system. Students will discuss the needs of plants, and learn about how differences in soil, water, and light quality can impact their successful growth, and build a functional terrarium to take home.
*Follow up activity: Classroom ecosphere activity
Prices begin at $300 for 20 students with each additional student costing $20. *This is a premium program, $40 will be added for materials.
Nanaimo Science offers a wide range of activities aimed at children from infancy to Grade 7. Check out our school break camps, Pro-D day camps and workshops, and Homeschool supports!