Outreach Activities
Upcoming Activities
Fall 2024
Now scheduling outreach activities.
Past Activities
Girl's Day at the Museum 2024
We used herbarium specimens to show a variety of cultivated plants. Activities included a matching game between wild relatives of known fruits found in the grocery store. Kids acted as taste testers for different cultivars of corn and apples. Lastly, we made botanical illustrations to describe traits that could be modified to create a new and improved cultivars.
More info: https://www.lsu.edu/science/engagement/kids-day-at-the-museum.php
Kids Day Drawing Activity - Drawing at Kids Day
Volunteers - Kids Day Volunteers
Preschool Seed Lesson 2023
Children begin to discover the world of plants and the dispersal mechanisms of seeds in their variable forms by seeing herbarium specimens, listening to books, and engaging in hands-on activities. Christina Doyle gives lesson at LaPrintanière Montessori Preschool in Baton Rouge.
Christina reading to the class
Christina showing the class herbarium specimens
Children exploring seeds from dried plants
BREC Bioblitz 2023
"Discovering plants older than dinosaurs" was our topic. We enjoyed showing the public about lycophytes occurring in the Baton Rouge area. We also had an exposition about what botanists usually do in the field!
More info: https://www.brec.org/bioblitz
BREC Bioblitz 2023 - Kids listening about extant and extinct lycophytes.
BREC Bioblitz 2023 - A visitor searching for spores in a fern.
BREC Bioblitz 2023 - Herbarium krewe
BREC Bioblitz 2023 - Observing ferns
Girl's Day at the Museum 2023
"Resurrection plants" was the name of our table. We enjoyed showing 8th-grade girls about Pleopeltis polypodioides, a resurrection fern occurring as an epiphyte on the beautiful live oaks at the LSU campus.
More info: https://www.lsu.edu/science/engagement/kids-day-at-the-museum.php
Girls at the Museum 2023 - School girls checking a resurrection fern with a microscope.
Girls at the Museum 2023 - School girls listening about the physiology of resurrection ferns.
Girls at the Museum 2023 - Looking at stomata in resurrection ferns.
BREC Bioblitz 2022
We shared with the public about our work in the herbarium, plant diversity and poisonous plants around Baton Rouge.
More info: https://www.brec.org/bioblitz
Night at the Museum 2020
It was a pre-pandemic event open to the public where we shared about plant, flower and fruit diversity, as well as our regular herbarium activities.
More info: https://www.lsu.edu/mns/education/night-at-the-museum.php
Night at the Museum 2020 - Sharing about herbarium work: mounting specimens
Night at the Museum 2020 - Talking about flower color
Night at the Museum 2020 - Sharing about fruit diversity
Night at the Museum 2020 - Talking about plant diversity