EASC K - 12 Workshops

Workshop topics:

Minerals, Rocks & Fossils (all grades)

Activities include:

• Identifying minerals by their physical properties of colour, streak (powdered form), hardness (scratching glass plates etc.), cleavage & fracture (how minerals break), reaction to dilute hydrochloric acid, and magnetism.
• Sedimentary rocks – from sediments to sedimentary rock, fossils
  
• Igneous rocks – from magma/lava to igneous rock, volcanoes, introduction to plate tectonics
  
• Metamorphic rock – from protolith to metamorphic rock
  
• The rock cycle
  
• Workshop can be expanded to include a discussion of plate tectonics and our local plate tectonic setting including earthquake risk/hazard.
  

Dinosaurs and Other Cool Fossils (all grades)

Activities include:

• Identifying the two main groups of dinosaurs (it’s all in the hips!): saurischian & ornthischian
• Sauropods “the long necks”
• Theropods “the meat eaters” & the evolution of birds (avian theropods)
• Ornithopods “the duck bills”
• Ceratopsians “the horned dinos”
• Pachcephalosaurs “the dome heads”
• Stegosaurs “the plated dinos”
• Ankylosaurs “dino tanks”

Volcanoes, Earthquakes & Plate Tectonics (grades 4/5 and up)

Activities include:

• Plate Tectonics: convergent plate margins (subduction zones), divergent plate margins (spreading centres) & transform plate margins (sliding past)
• Where magma is generated & types of magma
• Volcano distribution and types
• Earthquake distribution
• Our local plate tectonic setting and earthquake risk & hazard