PopUP SCIENCE is fun!
Check out our gallery of past PopUP SCIENCE events and see how families in the Chicago Southland area learn together during our free science activities.

PAST EVENTS

PopUp SCIENCE "Science of Healthy Choices" was held from 10am-1pm on Saturday September 28th, 2019.
With our partners from Intense Conditioning Homewood and Serendipity Yoga, families enjoyed workouts and meditation they can do at home. We had hands-on activities to highlight human anatomy, hand-washing, and sugar consumption.

PopUp SCIENCE "Bubble Bash" was held from 10am-1pm on Saturday August 24th, 2019.
With our partner Dober go hands-on with bubble exploration activities for the whole family!

PopUp SCIENCE "Metal Mania"was held on Saturday July 27th, 2019 with partners Gaby Iron & Metal, Governors State University, and Trialco.
Would you ever build a car out of ceramic? Or a plane out of plastic? Find out how metals and materials differ and are used for different purposes. See how metals work together in everyday systems like a dishwasher or a bike. Learn how professionals in the metal industry use the periodic table in their everyday work!
Express yourself through art and make a wind chime or metal sculpture with metal scraps. Join our metal mania groupies in decking out a community art exhibit using metal and recycled materials. Make an aluminum foil boat and guess that metal with Trialco!

Go Green!
How environmentally conscious are you & your family? Do you recycle? Do you reuse things that most people only use once? Do you reduce the amount of waste that enters and exits your home?
If not, this free Go Green! event is the perfect opportunity for you and your children to learn fun and creative ways to help make your home less wasteful and more conscious of the environment through crafts, science experiments, and so much more!
Our middle school conservation ecology interns will show off the native garden they worked hard to plant!
Thank you to our partners at Chicago Region Trees Initiative, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, and Homewood Disposal.

Time to lay a foundation!
PopUp SCIENCE Building Basics was an exciting event for our future engineers & architects to learn the basics of construction & structural design! Thank you to our partners Homewood Public Works and Scully ADA Consulting for inspiring scientific wonder, learning, and pursuit.
Click here for upcoming events!

Saturday September 29th, 2018

Bring your family and drop in on Saturday September 29th, 2018 from 10am-1pm at Homewood Science Center, 18022 Dixie Highway, for PopUp SCIENCE Take Flight! Take Flight celebrates aviation sciences with help from AeroStar, a non-profit that encourages students to pursue education and careers in the aerospace industry. Explore principles of aviation with our flight simulator. Build and test an airplane of your own in our STEAM Studio. Learn the story behind the Lansing Municipal Airport and examine the history and innovation behind aircrafts with model planes. PopUp SCIENCE is free and families are encouraged to drop-in, no registration required.
Come for the science, stay for the street fest! Be sure to stick around for Village of Homewood Fall Fest!
Saturday August 18th, 2018

PopUp SCIENCE "Bubble Bash" is presented with Dober from 10am-1pm at Homewood Science Center. Bubbles are fascinating and fun, and there is a world of science supporting their existence! Explore with us as we look at topics like surface tension, chemistry, and geometry by using bubbles!
Saturday July 14, 2018

Do you know how much water your body needs on a daily basis? Are you satisfying your sweet tooth beyond the recommended daily dose? Are you building your dinner plates with the nutrients your body needs? How much exercise does your family need and what are the easiest ways to have fun while moving!
Drop in for hands-on making and experimenting and take part in a fun family fitness routine led by The Trainer's Workshop!Take a look at your family's choices and figure out how you can make them healthier!
Presented with Franciscan Health and Healthy Choices, Illinois Action for Children, and The Trainer's Workshop!
Special Demonstrations

10am | 11am | 12pm: Family Fitness
10:30am | 11:30am | 12:30pm
"Nutrition and Numbers Game Show"

Drop into Homewood Science Center, 18022 Dixie Highway, for PopUp SCIENCE "Metal Mania"
being held from 10am-1pm on Saturday June 9th. With partners Gaby Iron & Metal, Governors State University, and Homewood Disposal, go hands-on with metal exploration activities for the whole family.
Would you ever build a car out of ceramic? Or a plane out of plastic? Find out how metals and materials differ and are used for different purposes. See how metals work together in everyday systems like a dishwasher or a bike.
Ever wonder how metal is recycled? Find out with hands-on demonstrations with Homewood Disposal!
Express yourself through art and make a wind chime or metal sculpture with metal scraps. Join our metal mania groupies in decking out a community art exhibit using metal and recycled materials.

Did you know that complex equipment like trains and cranes are made from combinations of simple machines?
Homewood Science Center is partnering with Mi-Jack Products, Inc. a south suburban company that has been engineering durable and reliable material handling equipment for more than 60 years. Learn how Mi-Jack Products' modern, sophisticated products were influenced by concepts from simple machines invented in 3rd Century BC. We'll explore simple machines like the lever, wheel and axle, pulley, screw, wedge and inclined planes. In the STEAM Studio families create their own simple machines using household and recycled items.
Be sure to stop in the HF Auditorium for Village of Homewood's Rail Fest!
Homewood Science Center featured activities that highlighted STEAM in police work: a fingerprint matching game and a police sketch challenge.

FREE! Saturday February 17th
Drop in! No registration necessary.
Stop by for a few minutes or a few hours.
Have a sweet tooth? So do we! Drop into Homewood Science Center on Saturday February 17th from 11am-2pm during Village of Homewood’s Chocolate Fest for PopUp SCIENCE Sweet Shoppe Science & Math. For young mathematicians, we are featuring a DIY hot chocolate make & take math game and a M&M balancing scale activity. Just how light is your favorite chocolate bar? Test its buoyancy in a sweet sink or swim experiment! Decorate an apron with the Village of Homewood Community Relations Commission in our STEAM Studio.
FREE!
Polar Express Party
@Homewood Science Center
Friday December 1st | 5pm-8pm
During Homewood's Holiday Lights
Drop in for a few minutes or a few hours.
No registration necessary.
All ages.








PopUp SCIENCE
"Ready, Set, Experiment!"
@Homewood Science Center
Saturday September 16th | 10am-1pm

Homewood Science Center Founders' Club member, Dober, has an exciting event in store for you!
PopUp SCIENCE "Ready, Set, Experiment" featured several stations of hands-on activities, led by chemists from Dober!
-
Make your own bouncy ball in our STEAM Studio
-
Elephant Toothpaste: Kids will learn about properties of chemical reactions through a fun expanding foam demonstration that resembles a toothpaste that elephants might use.
-
Ask a Dober chemist a question!
-
Interactive model airplane display
-
Mystery Toys: Children learn about making observations and forming hypotheses by trying to identify mystery toys.
-
Wild Water: Learn about the properties of water such as surface tension, adhesion, polarity and refractive index through a series of short, fun experiments.
In partnership with:

NASA Live Stream Solar Eclipse Viewing Party
August 21st | 10:30am-3pm
FREE | All Ages!
Over 400 people gathered at Homewood Science Center to celebrate the celestial wonder of the solar eclipse! We featured NASA live stream of the ‘Path of Totality’ in the Michael Wexler Theater. Our STEAM Studio featured making activities including solar viewers and solar masks with American Astronomical Society approved viewing film
and camera obscuras.
According to the Adler Planetarium, the eclipse will begin at approximately 11:54 am. At 1:19pm, the Moon will block 87% of the Sun.The eclipse will end at approximately 3 pm. At 11:54 am, the Moon will start to block Chicago’s view of the Sun, eventually covering 87%, and creating something spectacular—a solar eclipse. The last time Chicago was this close to the path of totality (100% blockage of the Sun) for a total solar eclipse was in 1925—92 years ago!










Krazy for K-9's
with the Cook County Sheriff Department's K-9 Unit
August 19th | 10am-1pm
















Homewood Science Center welcomed the Cook County K9 Unit for #PopUpSCIENCE “Krazy for K9’s” on Saturday August 19th as part of Village of Homewood’s Giant Block Party.
People had a chance to meet K9’s that sniff out narcotics and bombs and a bloodhound who assists in locating missing people! How amazing to watch the live training demonstration. These brave dogs detect and deter!
If you have questions about these furry and friendly K9 officers, now is your opportunity to ask the Cook County Officers on duty for this event!
For more information on the Cook County K9 Unit, visit them online.

Mini
Mini PopUp SCIENCE
"Botany and Bees"
@Homewood Science Center's Garage
Saturday August 12th | 10am-12pm
We explored botany and bees! One of the greatest ways to learn about plants is to observe their structures and use them to make art. We created botanical art by making plant chromatography bookmarks.
Bees get a pretty bad reputation, but they are essential for our food supply! People got their questions answered by master beekeeper at this Mini PopUp and ask away! We will have a hands-on activity on how bees make honey.
Homewood Science Center
at Village of Homewood's National Night Out
@Irwin Park | 18120 Highland
Tuesday August 1st | 5pm-8pm

Think Globally, Act Locally: You Can Make a Sustainable Difference
at Homewood Science Center
Saturday July 22nd
In partnership with:
Sponsored by:
Schneider Electric Project Based Internship
Sustainability Stories: Farmers Market
Schneider Electric collaborated with 12 high school interns at Homewood Science Center designing hands-on activities to explore energy conservation and energy efficiency! Kudos to our interns! Job well done!
Homewood Science Center, along with filmmakers Anne Colton and Amy Eagle of Studio 604 will highlighted "Sustainable Stories" in our newly renovated Michael Wexler Theater.
You can make a difference in the world, starting in your own home! PopUp SCIENCE "Think Globally, Act Locally: You Can Make a Sustainable Difference" explored sustainability topics including energy, water, food, and waste. We'll show you how being green can save the planet and save big bucks!
Did you know that water is a renewable resource? The staff microbiologist from Metropolitan Water Reclamation District brought their microscopes and showed off water samples from each stage of the water cleansing process. We learned about the Deep Tunnel Project and how water is stored in the ground. Kids made their own natural water filter out of recycled water bottles.
How far does your food come from? Our Kids Committee determined that some of our food comes from really far away places like New Zealand! We made seed starting pots out of newspaper and planted lettuce seeds to take home.
Even our youngest scientists learned about being green during our Sustainability Storytime led by Homewood Public Library. All in all, we learned that we can create healthy habits to help the Earth.










Sugar Shock, a mini PopUp SCIENCE
in Homewood Science Center's Garage
Saturday June 17th
10am-12pm
We showcased three activities from our past PopUp SCIENCE, "Fitness & Nutrition by the Numbers."
Did you know that most kids consume 49 pounds of sugar in a year?! We helped people calculate how much added sugar they might consume in a day. Kids made a a MyPlate, to practice building a well-balanced meal.





"Science of Film: Then & Now" explored photography and filmmaking with hands-on activities and exhibits for the whole family!
Families went back in time and became an animator using a zoetrope and animation strips. Also, as a tribute to Anna Atkins, the first person to publish a book of photography, we used light-sensitive sunpaper to study flowers and make images.
Everyone loved meeting the folks at Keslow Camera as they displayed movie making equipment from then & now! What a showcase of how cameras have evolved throughout the years.
A team from Governors State University was on hand showing kids how film is used in science with a microscope and camera combination.
We celebrated the brand new Michael Wexler Theater with 3D movies. People admired our community photography gallery that we hosted with help from Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College.
Science of Film:
Then and Now
During Homewood's Art & Garden Fair
Saturday June 10th
