Educator Program Search

Welcome to our Educator Program Search! This tool is designed to help you find the RMSC experience that best fits your needs. To begin, select your desired grade level, subject, program location, program type and/or day of the week from the dropdown menus below. Click the program title that interests you to learn more. As always, we're here to help at 585.697.1942.

New! Search "Limited Time Exhibition" to find our new program featuring SoundSense.

Download the 2019 School & Teacher Program Guide

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AdventureZone

Permanent Exhibition

Students explore the forces that have shaped Rochester in this exhibit that engages the mind and body. Students will be able to: pilot a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) underwater, see stratigraphy as they climb across the Genesee River Gorge climbing wall, take a simulated voyage in Lake Ontario, feel ...

At the Western Door

Permanent Exhibition

Explore 400 years of cooperation and conflict between the Seneca and Europeans in Western New York. Experience the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people and culture.

Discover Our Weather

Permanent Exhibition

Where do clouds come from? What is a "low pressure" system, and why does it sometimes mean a rainy day? What causes lightning? Experiment with the forces behind our changeable weather. Create a forecast to present on camera in the Weather Studio.

Energy Trail

Permanent Exhibition

Discover experiences spread throughout the museum where energy sources, forms and transformations, are presented in fully interactive settings that engage the whole body so that students can truly feel the energy required to power their world and understand the choices they can make to impact the future.

Erie Canal Lock

Permanent Exhibition

Operate gates and valves to raise or lower the water level as you pilot a model tugboat through a series of locks as students learn the engineering and history behind how the Erie Canal helped fuel the economic growth of the nation.

Expedition Earth

Permanent Exhibition

Travel back into deep time! Discover how earthquakes and volcanoes have helped change the land and seas, resulting in adaptation or extinction. Move forward to a mere 10,000 years ago when an immense ice sheet covered Rochester, and learn how a paleontologist uses fossil evidence to reconstruct the giants of ...

Green Infrastructure Showcase

Permanent Exhibition

Green infrastructure is a cost-effective, sustainable approach to reducing stormwater runoff pollution while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits. Explore the science and positive impacts of Green Infrastructure practices being used by the RMSC, including:

Rain gardens and/or bioretention areas
...

Nano

Permanent Exhibition

Imagine and discover a world you can't see! Hands-on components present the basics of nanoscience and engineering, introduce some real-world applications, and explore the societal and ethical implications of this new technology.

Please note that this is a longterm but temporary exhibit, so it may ...

How Things Work

Permanent Exhibition

Explore the mechanisms behind everyday objects and machines. Concepts include simple and complex machines, sound, electricity and magnetism.

Please note that the location of this exhibit varies. When making your reservation, please confirm with an RMSC team member that it is currently available to view.

Raceways

Permanent Exhibition

Experiments with Newton's laws of motion have never been so fun! Send balls looping, spinning and racing over ramps.

Illumination: The World of Light & Optics

Permanent Exhibition

Engage with more than 15 interactive stations that demonstrate exciting scientific concepts from reflection and refraction to radio waves to color temperature. Crank, spin, and illuminate to make light bend, sound emanate, and shadows dance.

Under Construction: Building Careers

Permanent Exhibition

This exhibit showcases the green technology used in the Sustainability Institute Hall (home of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability) building at RIT– from start to finish. It also highlights the careers necessary to complete the project from start to finish.

KEVAPlanks

Permanent Exhibition

Exercise student's mathematical and creative-thinking muscles as they engineer structures of their own design using thousands of these amazingly balanced wooden KEVA planks.

Native Peoples of the Americas

Permanent Exhibition

Explore the past culture of the Algonquin, Apache, Haida, Pueblo, Inuit, Haudenosaunee ("Iroquois") and Plains Indians.

Face To Face

Permanent Exhibition

Explore the ways in which individuals and societies express themselves to the world around them through clothing, pottery, and other distinctive totemic emblems.

Flight to Freedom: Rochester’s Underground Railroad

Permanent Exhibition

Immerse yourselves in re-created environments, first-person accounts, and hands-on experiences of the period leading up to the Civil War. Discover how Rochesterians fought against slavery using primary documents.

Rochester Business Hall of Fame

Permanent Exhibition

Discover stories of exemplary Rochester leaders who have made outstanding, enduring contributions to business and community in the Greater Rochester region.

Old Rochester

Permanent Exhibition

Featuring the diorama Rochester in 1838: Young Lion of the West

Immerse yourselves in 19th century Rochester - its shops and homes and how families lived in their community differently then from now.

Native American Environments & Culture

Guided Museum Experiences

Take a closer look at the Algonquin, Apache, Haida, Pueblo, Inuit, Haudenosaunee and Plains cultures. Compare and contrast the past material culture of these various groups of Native Americans living across North America. How are the religious, social, political, economic, technological and artistic aspects of these communities affected by ...

The Haudenosaunee

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent Guided Tour

Discover the rich culture-past and present- of the Haudenosaunee (hoe-dee-no-SHOW-nee) people, more commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy. Follow their story and discover the culture’s relationship with nature, the importance of clan structure, oral histories, The Great Law of Peace, and ...

The Haudenosaunee with Trade Game

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent Guided Tour

Add our “Trade Game” experience to your Haudenosaunee Tour (at no extra cost) for an additional half-hour of hands-on learning. Students will actively explore the impact of the beaver fur trade and the challenges it presented to both the Haudenosaunee and European ...

Rochester's Underground Railroad: Immersion Experience

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent Tour

Follow the North Star on a journey from slavery, to the doors of abolitionists, and on to freedom during this Underground Railroad Immersion Experience in our Flight to Freedom exhibition. This tour focuses on the decisions and risks taken along the way. The ...

Stories in Stone

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent Guided Tour

Get hands on with rocks, minerals and fossil and discover the Earth Systems that shaped our local geology. From earthquakes to erosion, weathering, deposition and tectonic plate movements, get up close and hands-on with the how the ground beneath our feet ...

Rochester's Geology

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent Guided Tour

Explore the Earth systems that shaped our local geology! From earthquakes to volcanoes, erosion, weathering, deposition and tectonic plate movements, get up close and hands-on with the how the ground beneath our feet has changed over time. Observe rocks, minerals and fossils. ...

Animal Adaptations

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent-Led Exhibit Workshop

Beavers, bears and birds, oh my! Structure follows function as students explore the adaptations that abound in the animal kingdom! Learn what adaptations are, the difference between physical and behavioral adaptations and how they help all kinds of animals survive, and thrive, ...

Electricity & Magnetism

Guided Museum Experiences

Docent-Led Exhibit Workshop

Discover the principles of electricity and magnetism to explore how those principles are at work in machines we use every day! Specific emphasis is put on the invisible force field we call magnetism and its relationship with electricity and how they ...

Erie Canal Simple Machine Challenge

Guided Museum Experiences

Inventor Center

Simple Machines to the rescue! It's time to clear the path to make way for the Erie Canal, but we need your team to build a “stump puller.” Combine levers, pulleys, gears and more to create an engineering marvel capable of extracting stumps ...

Lift It, Launch It, Let it Go: Seige Machine

Guided Museum Experiences

Inventor Center

Experiment with different projectiles, arm lengths and other variables to build and launch with a seige machine. Catapults and Trebuchets will breach a castle. Don't let the force of gravity keep you down! Each team invention will test potential and kinetic energy. <...

Light the City: Energy Wind Turbine

Guided Museum Experiences

Inventor Center

The City has lost power! We need team help to invent a wind turbine and light up the city. Measuring the volts, connecting the wires, and forces of motion to cause energy transformation. *Challenge is differentiated by Grade Levels

Freshwater Around the World

Guided Museum Experiences

Science On a Sphere

Immerse your students into an engaging experience utilizing 3-D data visualization. Observe the hydrologic cyle in action on our 5 ft. interactive globe. Students will make water resource management decisions by analyzing scientific data on freshwater sources including the atmosphere, &...

Predicting Weather

Guided Museum Experiences

Science On a Sphere

Immerse your students into an engaging experience utilizing 3-D data visualization. Discover the complex interactions and movement of air masses on our 5 ft. interactive globe. Students will collect real-time data on temperature, clouds, pressure, precipitation, and wind to make a ...

Plates in Motion

Guided Museum Experiences

Science On a Sphere

Immerse your students into an engaging experience utilizing 3-D data visualization. Examine earthquakes, volcanoes and seafloor structures to evaluate the theory of past plate motions.

Extend the Experience

Add to your students' experience ...

Live Science: Liquid Nitrogen—Solids, Liquids & Gases

Guided Museum Experiences

Live Presentation

Our coolest demonstrations, literally! This program explores temperature's effect on solids, liquids and gasses using liquid nitrogen .

Live Science: Pressure

Guided Museum Experiences

Live Presentation

The formula "Force over Area" is brought to life with this program about the pressure all around us and what happens when it's not.

Live Science: Hydrogen

Guided Museum Experiences

Live Presentation

An exciting range of demonstrations displays many of the properties of Hydrogen, the number one most common element in the universe.

Live Science: Electricity Theater

Guided Museum Experiences

Live Presentation

Two six foot tall Tesla Coils throwing 8 foot arcs of plasma (lightning) and the arcs actually play music. Our Faraday Cage can make the day of many in attendance electrifying!

Inquiry Room Exploration

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Explore science in a less structured setting as you learn and play in the unique Carlson Inquiry Room. Meet our live animals and investigate magnetism. Learn about states of matter as you experiment with vinegar and baking soda and make your own slime ...

Discovering Weather

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Investigate the connections between weather and water processes on earth. Become a water molecule and travel through the water cycle and make a water-cycle bracelet to take home. Learn about severe weather around the world.

Insect Investigations

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Explore the wonder of butterfly metamorphosis. Learn how insects communicate and meet the live critters that make their home in the RMSC Carlson Inquiry Room.

Magnet Exploration

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Learn about magnetic fields and experiment with materials that are magnetic. Explore attraction and repulsion. Make magnets float.

Rocks Fossils and More

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Explore fossils from the RMSC teaching collection. Sort rocks into three groups and learn about the minerals that make up rocks.

Simple Machines & Fantastic Forces

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Explore simple machines while experimenting with pulley systems and ramps. Learn about friction, gravity and inertia while investigating the forces of motion.

Solids, Liquids, Gases

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Explore the states of matter by comparing and contrasting solids, liquids and gases. Do hands-on experiments about liquid density and chemical reaction. Learn about polymers and make slime to take home.

Frog Adaptations

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Discover the ingenious adaptations of live frogs and why they’re important. Explore physical and behavioral adaptations that make it possible for frogs to live in tropical forests, frozen tundras and scorching deserts. Get a first-hand look at live frogs while learning about ...

Haudenosaunee School Days

Special Program

Immerse your students in the vibrant art and culture of today's Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Celebrate Haudenosaunee culture—past and present.

Meet local Haudenosaunee artisans who:

do quill work
make jewelry
do basket weaving
make corn husk dolls.

<...

School Overnight

Special Program

Give your class an experience they’ll never forget, a night at the museum!

Enjoy a unique opportunity to engage in hands-on activities, visit the planetarium, see our singing Tesla Coils in the Electricity Theater, be amazed with a Live Science Presentation, and of course have the ...

Challenger Learning Center

Special Program

The Challenger Learning Center of Greater Rochester is a high-tech, hands-on facility for space flight simulations located at Strasenburgh Planetarium. Coordinated by "Mission Commanders" from Monroe #1 BOCES, this unique experience is educational and fun.

Learn more about the experience on the Challenger Learning Center of Greater Rochester&...

Self Guided Nature Walk

Self-Guided Cumming Nature Center

Self-Guided Nature Walks include:

The Beaver Trail introduces you to the important cycles of nature. You will see forest, stream, marsh, and meadow habitats rich with plant and animal life on your way to an observation tower overlooking a 35-acre beaver pond. See first-hand one of ...

Ecological Communities

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

Compare field, forest and pond communities to gain insight into habitat, succession, food webs, and population dynamics

Water Monitors

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

This field study examines the features of clean water. Students will collect usable data on a Cumming Nature Center creek by collecting benthic macroinverebrates, performing chemical tests, measuring physical characteristics of one of the healthiest creeks in the region.

Sensing Nature

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

Discover the beauty and complexity of the natural world through activities that engage all the senses.

Field Journal Journey

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

Explore the complexity and biodiversity of the natural world through observation and data collection using field journals.

Focus on Native Frogs

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

This is a fun and dirty adventure that explores the amazing adaptations, lifecycle, and habit of the native frogs in our region.

Falling Leaves

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

Fall Season Only. Explore why trees lose their leaves in the autumn and how animals prepare for winter.

Winter Ecology

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

January through February, examine how plants and animals adapt to winter. Hunt for tracks and other evidence of animal activity.

Maple Sugaring

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

From the Haudenosaunee to the American pioneers, and on to modern day methods, the time-honored tradition of making maple syrup blends both history and ecology.

Every spring for the last 39 years, the RMSC's Cumming Nature Center in Naples, NY, explores this timeless craft. ...

Introduction to Natural Communities

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

Explore the woods to discover how all living things are connected through food chains and the relationships between consumers, producers and decomposers.

RMSC DELIVERS: Light & Color

Experiences at Your Site

Explore how and why we see colors in this fun, interactive show. Experiment with color mixing and learn about the different kinds of primary colors .

Maximum attendance for PreK: 30

Maximum attendance for grades 1-12: Any

RMSC DELIVERS: Polymers

Experiences at Your Site

Explore the amazing world of Polymer Chemistry in this hands-on program. . Your students will perform experiments to make different kinds of polymers like slime, Styrofoam, and extract DNA from a banana.

RMSC DELIVERS: Rocks and Minerals

Experiences at Your Site

This outreach gives the student a hands on understanding of geology. Igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks are explored Through experimentation along with the observation of color, streak, luster, and the use of the Mohs hardness scale students are able to identify a variety of minerals

RMSC DELIVERS: Bats

Experiences at Your Site

This fun and interactive program will help your students to understand bats, and the important part they play in our ecosystem. With role-playing, hands-on objects, and demonstrations your class will show how a bat finds it’s way around, what different bats eat, and help to dispel some of ...

RMSC DELIVERS: Dinosaurs

Experiences at Your Site

This very interactive program expands the students’ imagination as they learn about and “create” a fossil. Students become “paleontologists” in a mock “dig”, and then role play as dinosaurs to explore how they move, eat, and defend themselves.

RMSC DELIVERS: Insects

Experiences at Your Site

This fun, interactive program will get your class buzzing about insects. Students will take on the role of dragonflies, bees, crickets, and other insects, as they learn about insect anatomy, eating habits, and how they communicate.

RMSC DELIVERS: Pressure & Force

Experiences at Your Site

With this outreach students will be introduced to Pressure = Force /Area. Through demonstrations students will observe how pressure or the lack there of effects everything around us. From vacuums to a bed of nails participants will find out why a little pressure isn't a bad thing.

RMSC DELIVERS: Solids, Liquids and Gases

Experiences at Your Site

This is our coolest outreach yet. Really, it is! Your class will thrill at the use of Liquid Nitrogen (-196° C), as they learn how temperature effects energy and changes matter from solid to liquid to gas. Watch your students’ amazement turn to understanding as they begin to explore ...

RMSC DELIVERS: What is an Experiment?

Experiences at Your Site

This outreach is a wonderful introduction to the scientific process for the younger students, and a great exercise to get the older students thinking out of the box. Through a mix of hands-on experiments and interactive demonstrations, this chemistry program entices students to ask questions, make observations, develop theories, ...

RMSC DELIVERS: Electricity

Experiences at Your Site

Some say this demonstration is shocking, but we say simply, “Students are sure to get a charge out of it.” Your class will be electrified with hands-on experiments and demonstrations that help to explain atoms, and the role they play in electric currents.

RMSC DELIVERS: Energy

Experiences at Your Site

Driving a car, riding a bike, heating your house, and even sitting still, we use energy. Light, electricity, heat, even sound are all energies. The question is: “What is energy?” Demonstrators guide students in exploring these different forms of energy, how they connect, and how they are used.

Forest School Homeschool CNC Courses

Homeschool Program

Geology ROCKS!

Featured Combined Experience

Get two experiences for one with this new field trip!

Discover the science of tectonic plates with current data on our Science On a Sphere then embark on guided tour Stories in Stone with an engaging RMSC docent. Students ...

Vehicle Transportation Challenge

Guided Museum Experiences

Inventor Center

Experiment with aerodynamics and friction has you design and build a vehicle that can climb up and over a hill. Wheels will help you get there, but only with your inventive engineering design.

Mission: Mystery Planet

Guided Museum Experiences

Science On a Sphere

Immerse your students into an engaging experience utilizing 3-D data visualization.

Students will examine the topography of a “mystery planet” to develop a future mission. Observe the solar system to scale.

Go, Glacier, Go!

Guided Museum Experiences

Science On a Sphere

Immerse your students into an engaging experience utilizing 3-D data visualization.

Investigate surface temperatures on Earth to find locations of glaciers. Explore how the movement of glaciers have changed the surface of our planet.

Animal Defense

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

This adventure explores the unique defense mechanisms that our local animals use to protect and defend themselves.

Science in the Wild

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

Science in the Wild is an outdoor education primer on local ecology, history, art, and craft. This community program also provides a look at career choices in the Finger Lakes and the important role students can play in preserving our region’s natural resources.

Special School Experience: Forest School

Guided Program Cumming Nature Center

The Spice of Life

Guided Museum Experiences

Classroom Experience

Create and decode a “DNA recipe” to learn how variations in DNA lead to the inheritance of different traits. Decide what is on the menu at the “Bio Bistro” to discover how humans have an influence on desired traits.

Forces of Nature

Permanent Exhibition

Journey through the most powerful forces on the planet as students discover how incredible adaptations to the unique properties of earth, fire, air, and water enable life on our planet to survive and thrive.

SoundSense

Limited Time Exhibition

Sounds are a part of our everyday lives and help us to make sense of the world around us. Experience how sound comes from vibrations – waves of energy that push tiny molecules against one another in pulses. Explore the nature of sound and how we hear, the science and ...

Global Soundscapes: Mission to Record the Earth

Guided Museum Experiences

Immerse yourself in the amazing sounds of our planet! Through awe-inspiring screen images, surround sound, and live presentation, Global Soundscapes takes you on an ear-opening journey into the science of sound and the emerging field of soundscape ecology. Embark on a mission to investigate the dramatic soundscapes ...

Journey of Sound

Guided Museum Experiences

Students will see, hear and feel sound as they are first led through specific SoundSense exhibits. Explore how sound travels with a giant slinky. Add sound effects to a silent movie. Experiment with a musical scale. Students will then be led to a classroom for further investigation ...

Rotation and Revolution

Planetarium Shows

Discover how planets and moons rotate as they revolve, causing day, night, and the cycles of the lunar month and year. Older students will see seasons and eclipses as well.

The Strasenburgh Planetarium's new Digistar full-dome visualization system makes these concepts vividly clear, while staying true to ...

Science Museum

March 21

Strasenburgh Planetarium

Cumming Nature Center

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