Science Friday is an official partner of Citizen Science Month for April 2023!

We invite your to celebrate biodiversity with opportunities to do science, find community, and explore the great outdoors. These crowdsource science projects can be done by anyone anywhere. 

Get ready to channel your curiosity to look at biological diversity—the tremendous variety of plants, animals, bacteria, and other organisms living on our planet that help us survive and thrive. Healthy communities rely on healthy ecosystems. Observing, classifying, and counting organisms in our communities provides vital information about the health of those ecosystems. Scientists need people like you to help them develop innovative solutions for challenges such as climate change, pollution, and habitat loss. And it all starts with collecting information.

But you aren’t on your own! In addition to sharing great educational resources and fun citizen science projects, we’re teaming up with SciStarter to host a series of webinars for educators, caregivers, and lifelong learners. You can listen for frogs, count trees, do a bioblitz, or watch squirrels this month, with events to ask your questions every week in April! Discover ways to participate in scientific research with your family, your students, or on your own.

Want more science? Join the Beyond the Classroom Newsletter to receive monthly fun, hands-on, all-ages activities for inspiring curiosity and experimentation.

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Design a Frog Activity

Learn about the adaptations of frogs and toads and then design a frog of your own in this hands-on STEAM activity. This educational resource explores how frogs have adapted to their habitats, which has lead to incredible biodiversity. Presentation, worksheet, NGSS standards, and additional resources are included.

Design A Frog

FREE Citizen Science Month Webinars

Our guide for these interactive webinars is Jill Nugent. Jill teaches science online, engages educators in citizen science experiences for the classroom, schoolyard, and beyond, and serves on the SciStarter Team. An author for the National Science Teacher’s Association and past Associate Dean of STEM for Southern New Hampshire University, she has many years of experience planning and implementing Citizen Science projects with learners of all ages.

So bring your questions and join us for exciting discussions as we discover hands-on, real-world ways to share citizen and crowd science with the learners in your life. Each week is a new, fun topic with great resources and ideas!

Ribbit! Citizen Science for Frog Month

Thursday, April 6 at 8 pm EST
Join Science Friday and SciStarter as we celebrate National Frog Month! Frogs and amphibians are incredibly sensitive to changes in the environment so they provide an essential way to see how climate change is affecting our ecosystems. In this fun and informative talk, you’ll learn how to incorporate exciting research projects like FrogWatch and HerpMapper into your classroom, use them with your students, and align them with curriculum standards. Free! For K-12 teachers or anyone who educates.

Special Guest: Carrie Basset, Education Mission Manager for Akron Zoo and FrogWatch USA National Coordinator!

Watch the recording!

Earth Day, Every Day with Citizen Science

Thursday, April 13 at 8 pm EST
Make an impact in your community this Earth Day. In this webinar, you’ll learn to use free apps like NASA’s Globe Observer Trees and National Geographic’s Debris Tracker to investigate and report on the health of your neighborhood. Use technology to track garbage near your home, measure trees in your local parks, and fight pollution and climate change where you live. With a little training, you can make the world a better place this Earth Day and every day.

Special Guest: Peg Keiner, Director of Innovation for GEMS World Academy Chicago, National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, and Debris Tracker expert!

Watch the recording!

Discover Biodiversity in Your Backyard

Thursday, April 20 at 8 pm EST
Biodiversity is essential to healthy ecosystems. Join Science Friday and SciStarter for an interactive webinar where you’ll get to know real-world citizen science projects for tracking biodiversity in your own backyard. Collaborate with others during the City Nature Challenge BioBlitz or try apps like iNaturalist to explore on your own. Either way, you’ll help researchers and make a positive impact in your community. Free! This webinar is great for all learners.

Special Guests: Colleen Hitchcock, Associate Professor of Ecology at Brandeis University, and teen OurEcho Challenge award winners Reilly Hollern (2021) and Harper Fortgang (2020).

Watch the recording!

Bring Science Home All Year ‘Round

Thursday, April 27 at 8 pm EST
Engage in exciting STEM all year! Join Science Friday and SciStarter to discover fun ways to incorporate citizen science into your family’s weekends, vacations, or daily life. With Project Squirrel, Floating Forests, and Project FeederWatch to you can observe, track, and report on the biodiversity all around you with your favorite people. Join us for this fun discussion and make science a part of your day every day. Free! Perfect for homeschoolers and families.

Special Guest: Laura Lerman of California Academy’s Science Action Club.

Watch the recording!

Science Friday is thrilled to be a Citizen Science Month partner, hosted by SciStarter. SciStarter is where millions of people discover opportunities to participate in citizen science, a movement that’s sweeping the globe. There are citizen science projects for everyone!