Discovery Depot

This gallery stimulates the imagination, encourages exploration, and invites creative play. After a trip through the Children’s Playhouse, young chefs can enjoy nutrition-oriented role play in the kitchen center while little engineers operate the wooden train. Puzzles, books, and games provide plenty of additional opportunities for learning and fun.

Dream Big: Engineering Our World

Dream Big: Engineering Our World celebrates the human ingenuity behind engineering marvels big and small, and reveals the heart that drives engineers to create better lives for people around the world while transforming the way we think about engineering.

Layered Experience: Pairs well with Marbles, Motion, & Magnets, Engineering: Simple Machines, Engineering Encounters, and Robot Design Challenge (Classes).

Click here to access the Educator Guide!

Earth’s Wild Ride

Visit a Moon colony in 2081 during a solar eclipse and experience an exciting ride across both the Earth and Moon as a grandfather tells his grandchildren stories of our planet. Your students will learn about eclipses, the ice age, Earth’s water cycle, and the differences between our Earth and Moon.

Layered Experience: Pairs well with Weatherwise (Interactive Educational Theater) and Solar System Gallery (Guided Tour) or Astronomy (Guided Exploration).

Earth's Wild Ride is preceded by a live, presenter-led tour of the current seasonal night sky.

Earth, Moon & Sun

Explore the relationship between the Earth, Moon, and Sun with the help of Coyote, an amusing character adapted from Native American oral traditions. Your students will discover solar and lunar eclipses along with the Moon’s orbit, craters, and phases.

Layered Experience: Pairs well with The Art of Astronomy (Class).

Earth, Moon & Sun is preceded by a live, presenter-led tour of the current seasonal night sky.

Educator Guides

Many of the planetarium shows that we offer to school groups include Educator Guides. The following shows include Educator Guides; please click the name of the show to access!

Cosmic Colors: An Adventure Along the Spectrum

Dream Big: Engineering Our World

Flight of the Butterflies

American’s Musical Journey

Jean–Michel Cousteau’s Secret Ocean

One World One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure

Dinosaur Passage to Pangaea

Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia

Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs

National Parks Adventure

Secrets of Gravity: In the Footsteps of Albert Einstein

Engineering Encounters

Through bridge-building activities, students gain a new appreciation for the relevance of civil engineering and design in their daily lives. Creative problem-solving strategies motivate aspiring engineers to explore concepts such as force, balance, and stability.

Layered Experience: Pairs well with Dream Big: Engineering Our World (Planetarium Show), and Robot Design Challenge (Class).

Engineering: Simple Machines

As they cooperatively problem-solve in groups, young engineers will investigate the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of objects while building various machines. Exciting hands-on challenges will focus on Newton’s Laws of Motion and the Law of Conservation of Energy. Activities will illustrate the relevance of engineering in daily life as students design and build together.

Layered Experience: Pairs well with Dream Big: Engineering Our World and Secrets of Gravity: In the Footsteps of Albert Einstein (Planetarium Shows).

Flight of the Butterflies

Follow the monarchs’ perilous journey, join hundreds of millions of real butterflies in the remote mountain peaks of Mexico, and discover the compelling true story of a scientist’s 40-year search to find the monarchs’ secret hideaway in this beautiful scientific adventure.

Layered Experience: Pairs well with The Traveling Trunk Show (Interactive Educational Theater) and Beetles, Bugs, & Butterflies (Class).

Click here to access the Educator Guide!

Forces of Nature

Follow scientists on ground–breaking quests to understand what triggers earthquakes, volcanoes, and tornadoes.

Forensic Crime Lab

Students analyze and interpret evidence to identify the victim and the perpetrator at a staged crime scene. They reach their conclusions by using chromatography, forensic entomology, blood typing, skeletal identification, and other means of discovery. This class requires the participation of at least six chaperones willing to serve as “forensic assistants.”

Layered Experience: Pairs well with Ancient Egypt Gallery (Guided Tour or Exploration), Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs (Planetarium Show), and Ancient Egypt & Its Art (Class).