Science » SEM Faculty Menu of Activity - All Activity

19/08 2:44pm-02/07 12am: Body Works

Becks Andrew — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:21:53 GMT

When: 2:44pm, Mon, 19 Aug '24 - 12am, Thu, 02 Jul '26

During the session there will be 4 group activity stations for the students to try out. A maximum of 30 students per 1h session. The activities are as follows:

1. Looking at skulls and bones – we have models of a t-rex and a triceratops skull to compare the difference between herbivore/carnivore teeth and jaws which the children can touch. We also have a plastic human skeleton model that we will bring, and think about how our teeth are designed for our varied, healthy diet.

2. Microscopes - looking at slides that contain tissues of different parts of the digestive system (stomach, oesophagus, intestine)

3. Put your insides in - we draw an outline around a child on a large piece of paper. Then as a team, children figure out where our internal organs belong. We talk about what each organ's job is, and which other organs it has to cooperate with.

4. Chewing to pooing - using weetabix, orange juice, a ziploc bag and 20-denier tights, we think about the journey that food takes between when it gets eaten and when it gets eliminated. This is a messy activity, and quite gross, but children generally love it!

Contact Dr Marwan Albuhtori via marwan.albuhtori@warwick.ac.uk, or Dr Christine Lockey at c.lockey.1@warwick.ac.uk to book your session. For more sessions offered by the School of Life Sciences, please visit the outreach webpage: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/outreach/.

25/09-01/07: Dinosaur Hunters

Becks Andrew — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:14:34 GMT

When: Mon, 25 Sept - Wed, 01 Jul '26

During the session there will be 3 group activity stations for the students to try out, followed by a final activity.

The activities are as follows:

2. Code crackers (for confident readers) - children will learn about the Latin and Greek roots of dinosaur names, think about ways to describe dinosaurs, and propose new names for them.

3. Measuring Dinosaurs – Here the children will have a number of different dinosaur skull pictures with their total length on the back. We then give pairs a tape measure and they have to measure out the right distance to see how big their dinosaur is.

Once the children have completed their “training” we will bring around our “newly discovered dinosaur fossils”. We have 6 of these, so there will be 2 per group. The children will then have to use their knowledge from the session to decide what the animal may have eaten, what size they think it might be, how many legs it had, if it walked or flew etc. and even give it a name! There’s no right or wrong answers here – just fun to watch their imaginations go!

Contact Dr Marwan Albuhtori via marwan.albuhtori@warwick.ac.uk, or Dr Christine Lockey at c.lockey.1@warwick.ac.uk to book your session.

25/09-01/07: DNA Extraction From Your Own Cheek Cells

Becks Andrew — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:14:23 GMT

When: Mon, 25 Sept - Wed, 01 Jul '26

During the activity, students will learn about how the different traits that they have gained from their parents, such as eye colour, hair colour, facial characteristics are passed from each generation to the next, the answer being DNA. They will then learn about different features and properties of DNA.

The student will then have the opportunity to extract DNA from their own cells (cheek cells) and learn about how scientists work with DNA in many areas such as DNA fingerprinting at crime scenes, paternity testing and drug discovery.

The students will be using kitchen material and the 3 steps scientists use for all DNA extractions. Detergent, Enzymes, Alcohol.

At the end of the workshop they will have a sample of their own DNA to keep!

The maximum number of students we can accommodate is 30.

Contact Dr Marwan Albuhtori via marwan.albuhtori@warwick.ac.uk or Christine Lockey via c.lockey.1@warwick.ac.uk to book your session.