Gifted Atlanta

Registration opens today for the Spring into STEAM program at Georgia Tech. This one-week program for middle-school students will be held on the Georgia Tech campus the week of April 7-11, 2025.

Each day has its own theme, and registration is by the day, not by the week, so students can attend as few or as many days as they want.

The announced themes are:

• Monday: Biology
• Tuesday: Coding
• Wednesday: Design engineering
• Thursday: Art
• Friday: Mathematics

Each day’s session runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with extended care offered until 5:00 p.m. at no extra charge. Registration is $125 per day, which includes all materials, lunch, and a snack.

Girls interested in STEM fields can hear from women in STEM at the STEM Gems Summit on March 15, 2025 at Spelman College. This event will feature a panel of women who work in fields such as chemistry, biology, and cybersecurity. Presenters will talk about the work they do and the journey they took to get to their current positions, giving advice to girls who want to pursue a career in STEM.

Tickets are $5 for kids and $10 for adults.

STEM Gems is the brainchild of scientist Stephany Espy, who seeks to inspire girls to pursue STEM careers by exposing them to successful mentors.

The annual Great Backyard Bird Count will take place this Friday, Feb. 14, through Monday, Feb. 17. This worldwide citizen science project, which started in 1998, is a cooperative effort among the National Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Birds Canada.

To participate, you’ll watch birds anywhere you like — your back yard, a local park, or maybe around your school playground. You can observe for as little as 15 minutes on any of the four days. If you want to do more, you can count on more than one day, or watch for a longer time period. After counting the birds, you’ll send in your data, either with a mobile app or through the eBird website.

Not only can you collect data for these projects, but you can also view the data being collected all over the world — a great opportunity to see scientific research in action.

Admittedly, the past few years I’ve done a not-so-great job of giving advance notice about the Atlanta Science Festival, a two-week festival with dozens of activities for kids, teens, and adults. I tend to see an article about it in the newspaper right before it starts, and by then, all the spots for popular activities have already been taken.

Not this year.

The 2025 Atlanta Science Festival is a little over a month away. It starts March 8 and continues until March 22. The festival website says there are more than 100 activities, many of them hands-on.

The festival will kick off on Saturday, March 8 with Celebrate STEAM at Georgia Tech, a collection of exhibits on the Georgia Tech campus. Over the two weeks that follow, there will be dozens of events in a variety of disciplines. Looking just at the first weekend’s events on the website, topics include animal biomechanics, hydroponic farming, nature journaling, botanical illustration, geology, snakes, ice cream, historic preservation, and a lot more.

As usual, the festival will culminate in the Exploration Expo, a free event with more than 100 informative and interactive booths, Saturday, March 22 at Piedmont Park.

The festival website allows you to search for events by date, topic, audience (age group), or area of town (by ZIP code). You can also search by price to see only the free events.

Many of the planned events require advance registration and have a limited number of spaces.

The Math Circle program at Emory University is now registering students in grades 6 to 12 for its spring 2025 classes, which will begin this weekend.

Math Circle is an enrichment program for middle-school and high-school kids who enjoy mathematics and want to explore topics and concepts beyond what’s taught in their regular math class at school.

Classes meet twice a month on Saturdays on the Emory campus.

You can get more information and register at the Math Circle website. [Editor’s note: You can get general information about Math Circle at their website, but they haven’t updated the registration link there. To register for Spring 2025, go directly to this link: https://form.jotform.com/250237488447162 . Thank you to reader Tiara T. for catching this and bringing it to my attention.]

Emory Math Circle is free to attend, but the program operates with the help of donations, and they suggest a donation of $30 per child for those who can afford to give.

There’s been a lot of excitement lately about the planet parade, so I thought I’d share a few resources for kids who are interested in stargazing.

The Georgia Tech Observatory hosts public viewing nights once a month throughout the school year. There’s one coming up this Thursday, Feb. 6.

The Atlanta Astronomy Club has a wealth of information about observing the sky, and is open to astronomy enthusiasts of all ages. They have an event planned this Friday night in Acworth, but unfortunately it’s already full (and has a waiting list). They also have a stargazing night planned in Dunwoody next week. I don’t know whether that one’s full.

Tellus Museum in Cartersville has an observatory which is open for special astronomy workshops and events. Your next opportunity there is an Evening Sky Watch program scheduled for Friday, Feb. 14. The observatory will also be open in the wee hours of March 14 for the total lunar eclipse. The museum and observatory will open at 1 a.m. that Friday (for clarification, some would consider this Thursday night), just before the eclipse begins, so this one might only work for older kids. The following day, March 15, they’re hosting an astronomy symposium. They’re recommending ages 8 and up for that, but bear in mind it’s a series of lectures, so you should decide if that’s right for your kid. Advance registration is required for the Feb. 14 and March 15 programs. If you want to get advance notice of future events at Tellus so you can register before they fill up, sign up for their email newsletter on their home page.

Georgia State University has an observatory at their Dunwoody campus (formerly Georgia Perimeter College) which occasionally opens to the public. It doesn’t look like they have anything on the calendar at this point, but the website has contact information if you wanted to request a time for your family, club, scout troop, or class.

The Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta (near Decatur), which is operated by DeKalb County Schools, opens its observatory for free public observations on Thursday and Friday evenings from 9 to 10 p.m., clear skies permittng.

Those are the local opportunities I’m aware of. If you know of others, please share in the comments.