Science-at-Home

I’m doing my best to track science lessons, at-home experiments, opportunities to engage online, livestreams and online meetings, and even some non-science activities to share with all of you.

If you have any recommendations for adding to this list, please contact me (and let me know your website or a social media profile I can tag, so that others can see what you’re up to).

I started this page at the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. Some of the items in the list need to be updated, and I am working with my team to make those updates soon!

Here are some upcoming livestreams and events that you can tune into each week:

Funky Science Story Hour with David Grinspoon

David Grinspoon (aka, Dr. Funky Spoon) is offering his Funky Science Story Hour, each Wednesday at 3:00 pm Eastern Time.

The Space Gal’s Live Experiments At-Home

Emily Calendrelli has a series of videos with at-home experiments to her Youtube channel, and now a new Netflix show called “Emily’s Wonder Lab”.

Daily science classes with Janet’s Planet

Janet’s Planet is offering classes every weekday morning on space science and more! I was a guest for one of her classes and really enjoyed speaking with the students.

#TheScienceOf Online Chats with Scientist Mel

Scientist Mel does online livestream conversations with scientists and will be doing some live talks during the pandemic. You can watch on her Youtube Channel.

Science Class with Mark Rober

The same Mark Rober who grew to fame after showing the world how to use a glitter bomb to defy doorstep package thieves has a pretty tight Youtube channel where he shares lots of cool science.

Live Science sessions with Exploring by the seat of your pants

EBTSOYP has lots of live sessions with scientists as well as awesome videos to explore on their Youtube channel

Natgeo explorer classrooms livestream every weekday

National Geographic Explorer Classrooms will soon start their fall session of online learning (to be announced in September).

A place called space with Kevin J. DeBruin

Kevin J DeBruin has a lot of excellent content on space exploration for young learners on his YouTube channel.

Yuri’s Night world space party online!

Yuri’s Night is a global space party that takes place every year around or on April 12th, in celebration of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human being to travel to space and to bring together people who are interested in furthering humanities exploration of our place in the cosmos. This year, due to the global pandemic, the Yuri’s Night celebration was conducted online. You can watch the recording of the event on their YouTube channel.

Here are some online courses, lessons and lesson plans, at-home experiments, and more things for your explorations while staying in:

Physics Girl has some awesome videos for at-home experiments

Dianna Cowern, aka Physics Girl, has an incredibly awesome Youtube channel with lots of cool stuff to watch and learn. She even has a video of “20 Easy Experiments in 5 mins for Bored Adults and Kids at School Inside” that I would highly recommend for nerding out at home!

Nerd out with the Chabot Space and Science Center!

Chabot Space and Science Center offers their Learning Launchpad, which has free content made by the educators who work at the center. You can also follow Chabot on their Twitter.

Interactive science simulations from CU Boulder

Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

Learning Space With NASA at Home

These are awesome space and science activities and lessons from NASA at Home.

Sympathink

Sympathink has a really cool online booklet in 5 chapters that explores astrophotography. They also offer free courses in gardening and growing food at home!

Science learning at home with Jodrell bank

The Jodrell Bank Observatory is offering a variety of online materials for adults and children to learn about astronomy and space exploration. The have an astronomy lecture for parents right now and a couple of experiments for children to learn about rockets with household materials. They’ll be adding more in the coming weeks!

The Great Courses plus are offering a free month of courses!

These are collegiate level courses for adults to learn a whole lot more about our world. They have courses in the sciences, but also lots of other content. They have a free month offer right now!

NASA Kids’ Club!

The NASA Kids’ Club has a whole bunch of great stuff for young learners and their families!

Snoopy to Space!

The Space Foundation and the makers of "Peanuts" have 10 downloadable Snoopy-themed lesson plans for K-8 students to learn about space with the help of Snoopy!

Virtual Field Trips from Arizona State University

No time like now to jump online and go somewhere else! ASU has a series of field trips to places around our world, where you can explore geology and biology.

Dark Skies, Bright Kids

Dark Skies, Bright Kids from the University of Virginia Astronomy Depts.’ Grad Student Group has a bunch of awesome astronomy projects for children, families, and grown-up kids alike! (Thanks for the share, Andrew Burkhardt)

Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture series

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has free videos of their Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture series on their YouTube Channel. (Thanks for the share, John Jossy)

Make something!

Anna Sakhno has a bunch of crocheting videos on her YouTube channel. In this one, she shows you how to crochet an ammonite shell basket!

This video from Easy Origami shows you how to make Origami DNA from paper!

Learn about Earth@Home!

The Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) has developed a free, online digital toolkit for exploring and learning more about the Earth, geology, and geological history through their Earth@Home program. (Thank to Samantha Sands for sharing! Samantha is the owner and operator of Buyse’s Bakery)

Here are some other awesome science-related ways to explore from home:

Slooh - Online access to real telescopes!

Slooh allows you to see livetime feeds from real telescopes online! They also have lots of cool information about astronomy, and they have an upcoming live class on April 7th hosted by Paul Cox.

Watch livestreams of the northern lights

Explore.org and Polar Bears International have a webpage with livestreams of the northern lights.

Explore Opportunities with NASA!

Explore Opportunities has a whole bunch of projects for citizen scientists, students, engineers, and more to submit innovative ideas that could be used on future space exploration missions or to participate in current missions. For instance, you can help report aurorae, search for a potential new planet in the outer solar system, apply to do an analog simulation with NASA’s HERA mission, and more!

Keep an eye out for the space station!

Seeing the International Space Station fly overhead in the night’s sky is a wonderful experience. The first time I remember seeing it was looking up from a hot tub in California to see the ISS and one of the space shuttles undocking way back in 2007. NASA has a website that tells you how and when to Spot the Station!

Want to know how space exploration benefits our lives on earth?

NASA Spinoff is a yearly magazine that explores all of the year’s NASA technologies and experiments and more that benefit our civilization and answers, thoroughly, questions from those who think that space exploration has no benefit for humanity.

Here’s some stuff specifically for educators:

Here are other things that aren’t necessarily science, but will allow us to share stories, explore art and history, and learn more about our place in the world together:

Free content from libraries and museums

Peruse over 300,000 books and 800,000 other digitized items through the New York Public Library. You can even download three free ebooks at a time for reading while we’re all at home!

The Guggenheim has digitized over 200 books on Modern Art that can be viewed online.

The British Museum has lots of online content and virtual tours of their galleries!

Hundreds of museums and libraries have available coloring pages developed from their collections. Their #ColorOurCollections challenge allows anyone to access the content and the coloring pages (though they either have to be printed at home to be colored, or people will have to use graphic design programs to color them).

Archive.org has just opened up access to over 1.4 million books over a variety of subjects in both fiction and non-fiction. They’re calling it the National Emergency Library!

More and more museums are jumping onboard with virtual tours and online experiences for learning more about their collections.

Free coloring book from Tyrell Cannon

Some of you might know that I had a cameo in Seth Jacob’s recent comic book Astrobiology #1. The illustrator of that comic book, Tyrell Cannon, has a coloring book of his comic illustrations on his website that he’s currently offering for free (using code ‘isolation’).

The Brick Life has a 30 Day LEGO build calendar!

This just sounds like lots of fun! Playing with LEGOs was a key way for me to explore space and imaginary ideas when I was a kid (and, admittedly, I still break out the ol’ bricks from time-to-time as an adult). Check out this 30 Day LEGO Calendar from That Brick Life

Nightly Operas streaming from the Metropolitan Opera House

The Met is offering a Nightly Opera Stream while we’re all at home. These are some incredible shows to experience, even from the comfort of your own home.

Why not use this time to listen to some old time science fiction radio shows?

We have books and movies and video games and more to keep us occupied during this time, but for those who want to take a step back in time, Old Time Radio Downloads has a bunch of free scifi radio shows from our past that you can listen to right now!

WATCH CIRQUE DU SOLEIL ONLINE

The folks at Cirque Du Soleil are sharing a bunch of videos and other content online during the pandemic, and they’re even streaming some full shows. They’re calling it #CirqueConnect.

Other curated and non-curated lists:

Holy Heck, Kristen Bell!!!!

The incredible actress, Kristen Bell, has curated a huge list in one long Twitter thread with lots of activities for parents, children, families, and, well, just about anyone!

500 women scientists’ list

500 Women Scientists is a grassroots organization started by women and working to amplify the voices of often-times marginalized individuals within the sciences (especially women!). They’ve created a list of STEM Education Resources for those Social Distancing.

Huge List from GlobalEdu Ranger

GlobalEdu Ranger has compiled a huge list of resources as a Google Sheet that you can browse to find lots more science-related things to do!

Upcoming space events from cosmic perspective

My friends over at Cosmic Perspective are curating a list of upcoming events in space exploration that you can tune into virtually. Livestreams, VR meditations, online webinars, and more! Definitely worth checking out.

A bunch of space related activities from the international dark sky association

The folks at IDA put together this awesome list!

Of course, there are lots and lots of online classes for learning just about anything!

Class Central has compiled a humungous list of online courses (at the collegiate level) that might be of interest to some of you.

I’ve used Coursera, EdX, and MIT OpenCourseWare to learn a bunch of stuff online over the years!

Want to learn a new language? Check out Duolingo!