Specht Lab participates in BRB Kids’ Science Day

Visitors filled the BRB’s first floor from corner to corner, all afternoon!

Earlier this May, Clarice and Heather teamed up with fellow first-year Plant Bio grads Pat Mendoza and Gordon Younkin, to organize an activity for the Big Red Barn’s annual Kids’ Science Day event. One of the BRB’s many yearly signature events, Kids’ Science Day aims to give young children up-close interactions with graduate students and their research, through an entire barn full of activities and demonstrations. From making slime to inspecting insect terrariums and from drawing with pendulums to building cell models, graduate students from all over Cornell gathered to share their love of science with visitors and their families. The event had a record-breaking number of visitors this year, with at least 200 kids and their parents stopping by to learn and engage in some hands-on science. These visitors included not only local schoolkids but also the families of a few among Cornell’s own faculty, making for an inclusive and friendly community experience all around!

Presented with jars of colored pompoms to represent flowers, visitors were asked to deliver pollen between matching flowers.

This year, the first-year gang put together a two-part activity all about pollinators and pollination syndromes. One table, manned by Clarice and Heather, introduced visitors to the pollinator syndromes that attract birds, bees, and beetles, while the other table, led by Pat and Gordon, featured a pollination game in which visitors learned why and how flowering plants depend on pollinators to produce new seeds. The event lasted three hours on Saturday, May 4, during which young visitors and their families stopped by to chat—and to collect stickers for their science day passports, which encouraged them to visit as many activity stations as they could!

The team after a full afternoon of science outreach! (Left to right: Gordon Y., Clarice G., Heather P., Pat M.)

Kids’ Science Day is a yearly community event hosted in the spring by the Big Red Barn, with funding from sources including Graduate Women in Science. For more information, visit the BRB’s Student Experience page.