Slow down. Look, listen, and smell the world around you. Join KQED this summer for a K-5 educator series on integrating outdoor learning, technology and using our senses to help inform us about our world. Explore ways to engage students more deeply to connect with nature in their own local place.

Learn how to use a sound recorder and camera to record, document, and archive sounds, smells, and sights. Share the information with students by mapping data or creating a slideshow. The skills you learn in the series can be applied to other types of audio and visual mapping multimedia projects for the classroom.

Check out the different sensory offering this summer:

• Smellscapes July 8, 10, and 12 in San Francisco from 9 to noon
• Soundscapes July 17 – 19 in San Francisco from 9 to noon
• Soundscapes July 22 – 24 in Contra Costa County from 9 to noon
• Photoscapes/Patterns in Nature August 5, 8, and 9 in San Francisco from 9 to noon

Read more here or register here

You will be notified by e-mail for confirmation of workshop series. 8 – 10 spaces per series.

For questions, please e-mail Nancy Yamamoto.

Featured Presenters:
Lynn Moroney, StarTeller, noted author and storyteller
Dr. Steve Howell, NASA Ames Research Center, Project Scientist on NASA’s Kepler Mission

Explore the Universe near and far through classroom-tested, standards-based, hands-on astronomy activities. Discover investigations and techniques to help teach earth and space science in the context of the Next Generation Science Standards. Learn how you can teach astronomy through storytelling and engage your students from diverse and underserved populations in science through their astronomical heritage. And find out about the latest discoveries by NASA’s Kepler mission and the search for planets around distant stars.

Participants receive a wealth of teaching resources, including The Universe at Your Fingertips 2.0 DVD-ROM (retail value $30), a large collection of resources for teaching astronomy.

Target Audience: Teachers in grades 3 – 12; and those who work with them
Cost: $95 until July 5 / $125 on site July 20
For more information and a link to register, go to: http://astrosociety.org/education/k12-educators/galileo-teacher-training-program/

• Get students excited about electricity and magnetism!
• Learn how to make the science of energy more engaging!
• Meet standards while teaching students how to save energy!

PEAK is an award-winning standards-based energy education program for 3rd-7th grade students. Through hands-on activities, students learn about the science of energy and are inspired to take action to create a more sustainable world.

Enroll to Receive the Following at NO COST:

• STEM – based teacher in-service training
• Curriculum correlated to 3rd-7th grade standards and Common Core
• A toolkit for hands-on science labs (Worth over $350!)
• Green Careers presentations
• Assemblies with our energy-saving superhero Bulbman
• Lesson planning and classroom assistance

SPACE IS LIMITED!

Click here to register on the PEAK website!

A $100 stipend is awarded to teachers completing the training.

Training from 9:00AM – 3:00PM, lunch provided.

Held at the SFPUC Headquarters Info:
2nd Floor, O’Shaughnessy Room C
525 Golden Gate Ave, SF, CA 94102

Please RSVP at least one week prior to the training date.

Questions? Email AKnox@energycoalition.org or Call (510) 444-5060 ext. 15

Put on your evolution eyeglasses and your nature of science thinking cap and join the University of California Museum of Paleontology for (yet another) fun-filled five days of evolutionary explorations with biologists and educators at the University of California. The Think Evolution Summer Institute, returning for its fifth year, will combine lectures by prominent evolutionary biologists with sessions focused on hands-on activities for the middle school, high school, and community college classroom. Topics this year include genomics, phylogeography of amphibians, biogeography of moths, the evolution of gossip, and natural selection.

When: Monday through Friday, July 29–August 2, 2013; 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
Who: Middle school, high school, and community college biology teachers and science educators
Where: UC Museum of Paleontology, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Cost: $75.00 for five days; includes lots of free resources distributed to participating teachers plus morning and afternoon snacks. Plus a field trip to our very own Academy for a tour of Human Odyssey.
For more information: Visit the program website
To Register: Click here soon as the course fills up quickly!

**NOTE: This is not an Academy hosted course. Please direct all questions and requests for more information to Louise S. Mead or Lisa White.**

The Academy was hopping with Homeschoolers and their families learning in the Academy exhibits, discovering in the Naturalist Center, and observing our animals to collect data. Read more about the activities available at this event HERE.

Save the Date!

Our next Homeschool Day events will take place on Monday, December 9, 2013 and Tuesday, April 8, 2014.

For those who were not at our Homeschool Day event this spring, we invited all attendees to take some time to explore some of the animals at the Academy. Read on to see some of the great work that they did.

Reptiles!
Younger learners collected observations on adaptations of reptiles in our Rainforest and Aquarium. Here is the activity guide they used to find their way.

Those who shared their data found reptiles in many colors of the rainbow! See a picture of the chart they made:

Did you see a reptile in the Rainforest or Aquarium? If so, tell us about what colors you saw and how those colors help it survive in its habitat? (You can use the comment option below to tell us!)

Bird Behavior
Older homeschoolers were invited to be an Academy biologist for the day and take careful observations of the behaviors of some of the live birds that we have in our Academy exhibits.

Using this worksheet, kids made tallys of penguin and macaw behaviors.

We compiled all the results into graphs that you can use to compare what you observed at Homeschool Day to what other homeschoolers observed on the same day! See the results here.

Let us know what types of behaviors you and your family saw at Homeschool Day! (Use the comments section below to share what penguin and macaw behaviors you observed.)

For questions about homeschool events, email homeschool@calacademy.org.
If you wish to receive homeschool event updates directly to your email, you can sign up for our homeschool email list by sending us a note at homeschool@calacademy.org.

In response to the need for a better informed and scientifically literate populace, the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education received funding from the Moore Foundation to develop a web-based resource for educators and the general public that will provide rigorously-vetted, non-partisan, scientific information on global change, specifically how the earth’s natural systems are changing.

They need your help to better understand how teachers (at all grade levels, in both formal and informal settings) view global change, the importance of teaching it, and the resources available for doing so. Don’t teach about global change issues? They want to know that too!

To participate in the survey, follow this link:
UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL CHANGE SURVEY

This anonymous survey is being conducted by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study and should take you less than 15 minutes, but will help hundreds of thousands of educators and students for years to come! Please complete this survey by March 31st.

If you have any questions about the survey, please email ugcinfo@bscs.org.

Discover Academy Animals
Homeschool Day is full of drop-in programs and places where you can learn more about the habitats and organisms on display at the Academy. Go on an African Safari and explore the amazing biodiversity of the continent. Ask a biologist about our penguins as the animals are fed. Or, get your hands into a tidepool!
See our Registration Guide for more details about our exhibits and programs.
 
Explore, Collect, Contribute
This year, we invite all families to participate in a special group effort at the Academy. Upon arriving in the morning, pick up a worksheet to help explore the museum and collect data about some of our live animals. Then in the afternoon, contribute your discoveries to a huge collective data sheet.
Read more about this program on our Event Schedule.
 
Classroom and Lab Programs
Touch a coral skeleton. Use a microscope to look up close at an insect. Discover how plants and animals rely on each other in the wild. Get a taste for how to contribute to real scientific research. Our hands-on classroom and lab programs are reserved in advance and require an extra fee.
Learn more about the specific programs being offered on our Reserved Programs Guide.
 
Registration Information
Homeschool admission for all families outside of San Francisco is only $6.95 for all children (ages 4-17) and up to two adults. San Francisco homeschool children (ages 4-17) and up to two adults can attend for free. Reserved Programs require an additional fee.

Pre-registration is required to attend the event. Tickets will be available online on March 25th at www.calacademy.org/homeschoolday. Reservations for our lab and classroom programs will be taken over the phone (877-227-3311) starting at 8 am on March 25th.

For all the details about registration, be sure to read our Registration Guide!

 
Contact Us

For questions about homeschool events, email homeschool@calacademy.org.
 
For many of the most frequently asked questions about homeschool day registration and the event, see our Registration Guide and the Event FAQ.

 
Links to Important Homeschool Information

• Registration Guide
• Reserved Programs Guide
• Event Schedule
• Event FAQ
• Or download all the event details and registration information in one file

Learn simple strategies for building community, using nature in lessons, and getting your students outdoors. Open to any educator, traditional and nontraditional.

Lessons from the Ocean
Saturday, March 23, 2013
9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Use the ocean to teach math, science, and language arts skills. Learn a marine food web activity, explore human impacts on ocean resources, and learn about cultural connections to the bay and the ocean. Content is focused on grades four to eight.

Our Changing Climate
Saturday, April 13, 2013
9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Learn to teach basic climate science and empower your students to take action. Practice teaching the carbon cycle, investigate “garbology,” and develop simple student action projects. Content is focused on grades five to eight.

Workshops will be held in San Francisco. They are FREE and include lunch and take-away teaching toolkits. Stipends are available for teacher teams from the same school who attend two or more workshops and for teachers who can evidence implementation of any climate change materials ($100 per person!).

For more information visit their website.

WHEN: Thursday, February 28, 2013, at 4-8pm
WHERE: Skyline College’s Student/Community Center in Building 6, Room 202 (second floor)
COST: Free – including the curriculum, a teacher toolkit and a light dinner

High school faculty attending will receive the training, lesson plans and teacher toolkit to easily teach this interesting and exciting subject matter right away. The teacher toolkit includes 6 solar car kits and all specialized materials for hands-on activities and experiments. Participating teachers can earn 1 CEU.

Hands-on exercises include:

• Envisioning a sustainable future
• Learning to make biodiesel
• Constructing a solar car
• Developing a school green transportation policy and campaign
• Learning about careers in green transportation through informational interviews, job shadowing and internships

Please RSVP to Rita Gulli by email or phone 650.738.4491. The first 20 teachers will receive the curriculum toolkit.

**NOTE: This is not an Academy sponsored event. Please direct all questions and requests for more information directly to Rita Gulli.**