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UW Geological Museum celebrates Earth Science Week with water science kits for kids

Dinosaur skeletons at the UW Geological Museum
University of Wyoming Geological Museum

In honor of Earth Science Week, Wyoming's elementary-aged kids can receive a Water Science Box from the University of Wyoming (UW) Geological Museum. They're taking the place of the annual Wyoming ROCKS event for the second time this year.

"With the Delta variant, we really thought about doing an in-house event and then we were just like, you know, we didn't want to be a super spreader. So we did these kits," said UW Geological Museum's manager Laura Vietti.

Earth Science Week is an international program and its theme changes every year. This year it's "Water Today and for the Future."

"And so we take that as our inspiration and then we adapt whatever our kit or outreach event will be to loosely follow along with that theme," said Vietti.

Each kit contains three educational activities about the geology and water of Wyoming.

"We've aimed at Elementary School, so first to sixth grade. The younger ones, we definitely recommend adult supervision. And the older ones, I think they'll get it pretty fast," she said.

According to Vietti, the kits reach more kids than the in-person events but are very labor-intensive, so they probably won't continue after the pandemic.

"But I think if we do them in the future, they're only going to be one a year or perhaps every other year, they're there," she said. "Specifically for this Wyoming ROCKS outreach event, I would prefer to go more towards an in-person event, but maybe supplemented with some broader outreach kits, if we have the resources."

The museum partnered with the Wyoming State Geological Survey and the Science Kitchen for these kits. There are only 300 available. Those interested in getting a kit can reserve one on the Science Kitchen's website. Laramie pickup is free, but boxes shipped to anywhere else in the state will require a $5 shipping fee. There are also toolkits available for teachers to use in their classrooms. You can find more information on those on the Geological Survey website.

Ivy started as a science news intern in the summer of 2019 and has been hooked on broadcast ever since. Her internship was supported by the Wyoming EPSCoR Summer Science Journalism Internship program. In the spring of 2020, she virtually graduated from the University of Wyoming with a B.S. in biology with minors in journalism and business. When she’s not writing for WPR, she enjoys baking, reading, playing with her dog, and caring for her many plants.
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