Gifted Atlanta

It’s time again for Exploration Expo, the annual, free event offering hundreds of interactive science activities for children and families.

The 2017 Expo will be Saturday, March 25, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Centennial Olympic Park. Dozens of companies and schools will offer fun, educational activities.

Exploration Expo is part of the Atlanta Science Festival, a joint effort among Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

The Spivey Hall Children’s Choir will hold auditions for young singers on Saturday, April 29, 2017.

Auditions are open to girls and boys ages 10 to 13. No prior musical experience is necessary. Students selected for the program may remain in the choir until they complete high school.

Founded in 1994 and affiliated with Clayton State University, the Spivey Hall Children’s Choir consists of three groups: the Young Artists Choir, where most new singers are placed; the Children’s Choir, a larger ensemble that includes children through age 18; and the Tour Choir, a traveling group that has performed in locations across America and overseas.

To register for an audition, you can either download a mail-in application or complete an online application. (For the online application, the link takes you to the Spivey Hall ticketing page. Scroll down until you see the item called “2017 Spivey Hall Childrens [sic] Choir Audition Applicat.”)

It’s time again for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, which begins this Friday.

Every year, the Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology sponsor the bird count, conducted by bird watchers of all ages across the country. The bird watch helps scientists understand how many birds are in different locations and how bird populations are changing. It’s a project your child can do at home, at school, at a local park, or in any other location. Last year, more than 160,000 birdwatchers in more than 130 countries took part.

To participate, you’ll spend a minimum of 15 minutes observing one location, on one or more days between Feb. 17 and Feb. 20, 2017. Tally how many birds of different varieties you see. Then submit your count through the web site. You can do just 15 minutes on one day and stop, or you can do lots more observations at different times of day and even different locations.

If your gifted child really enjoys birding, they can continue to make observations and submit them for scientific use all year long through eBird, another program of Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The spring session of Gwinnett Alliance for Gifted Education’s Saturday Exploration Program will begin April 15, 2017.

These Saturday morning classes, held at Rock Springs Elementary School in Lawrenceville, are designed for gifted and high-achieving students in grades 2 through 5. Courses for spring 2017 include biology, meteorology, computing, history, and engineering.

Registration deadline is March 31; the deadline to request financial aid is Feb. 28.

Emory Math Circle will host a lunch on January 28, 2017, to expose girls to women who work in STEM-related professions.

The lunch is primarily designed for middle-school-aged girls, although all are welcome to attend. Speakers will include:

• Stephanie Espy, author of the book STEM Gems
• A CDC epidemiologist
• An applied mathematics researcher from Emory University
• An analyst with McKinsey & Co.

The event will take place on the Emory University campus. The program and lunch are free, but advance registration is required.

UGA has opened registration for the next two Duke TIP Scholar Weekend at UGA: Feb. 4-5, and March 18-19, 2017. Students in grades 8 to 11 can spend the weekend on the UGA campus studying an academic topic of their choice.

Classes for the February weekend include topics in engineering, the history and culture of Appalachia, music, psychology, politics, and more. March topics include climate change, entrepreneurship, music journalism, a Rube Goldberg challenge, and — I’d like to know more about this one — something called “Star Wars Mock Trial.”

The weekend program costs $450 for students staying in a hotel on campus, or $400 for students who want to commute to the program each day. Financial aid is available.

To participate, a student must either:

• Be registered with the Duke TIP Talent Search program; or
• Obtain confirmation of gifted status from the Duke TIP headquarters

Registration is open for both weekends now. Popular classes will fill quickly.

This Saturday, January 7, the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America present Mathemati-Con, a day of brain-stretching and entertaining math activities.

Mathemati-Con is best suited for middle-school and high-school students who have an affinity for math.

Highlights of the day include:

• “Weird Ways to Multiply.” There are many unusual ways to multiply numbers. Can you figure out why these unconventional methods work?
• “Mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin
• Local and national math competitions (the competitors have already been selected, but you can watch them battle it out)

Mathemati-Con will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and Marriott Marquis Atlanta hotels. Admission is free and no advance registration is necessary.

Georgia Tech’s BioIgnite program is offering a “day camp” in genetic engineering for students in grades 6 to 8.

Students will be introduced to basic principles of genetics and DNA, and will learn how to build a plasmid like scientists do.

The one-day class will be offered twice in the spring semester:

• January 21, 2017, in conjunction with Georgia Tech’s K.I.D.S. (Kids Interested in Discovering Science) Club
• March 11, 2017

Registration is $50 per student.

BioIgnite is aimed at getting kids interested in biotechnology at a young age. It offers one-day camps during the school year, and week-long camps during the summer.

Museum of Design Atlanta in Midtown will offer a series of camps for children ages 5 to 12 during the upcoming winter break.

The camps are sold a la carte, and each camp is a one-day session that runs from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Younger children, ages 5 to 7, will explore littleBits, LEGOs, Hexbugs, and Minecraft. Older campers, ages 8 to 12, will work with Arduino, Minecraft, Cloudbits and Bitcraft.

The cost for each day of camp is $55 for members, $65 for non-members.

Emory Math Circle is now accepting registrations for its spring 2017 session. The program, which you can think of as a high-level math lovers’ club, is open to students in grades 6 to 12. Students are divided into four groups, based on their grade level and math experience.

The program meets on Saturday afternoons on the Emory campus. Groups are taught by Ph.D. students from the Emory Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.

The next session of Math Circle will begin on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. Registration is open now, with new students accepted on a rolling basis, as space allows.