According to SciStarters, a matching site for volunteers and scientific research, "A citizen scientist is an individual who voluntarily contributes his or her time, effort, and resources toward scientific research in collaboration with professional scientists or alone. These individuals don’t necessarily have a formal science background.”

Here’s a project you can do at home just by collecting microbes from your showered and mailing them to a scientists:

https://scistarter.com/project/17248-Showerhead-Microbiome#sthash.N7CpJeHm.dpbs

Hear an interview with the scientist behind this project, on Tumble, a science podcast for kids!

http://www.sciencepodcastforkids.com/single-post/2017/02/10/The-Secret-Life-of-Your-Shower-with-Noah-Fierer

That’s where I heard about it first and it’s a terrific show!  Find it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want more citizen science?  The SciStarter website has a terrific search function to help you find an experiment to be a part of, and you can filter your search by age group.

I found out about SciStarter from SciGirls, a PBS show where you can see see real tween and teen girls doing citizen science and download activity guides .

Heres the SciGrils website for parents:

http://www.scigirlsconnect.org/citizen-science

and the site for kids:

http://pbskids.org/scigirls where you can watch episodes, play games or find activities.  

Want to get your hands dirty right away?  Check out our program Curiosity Hacked, which will be focusing on building supportive habitats for native species and citizen science this year.  We have a two Meet & Greet events: August 3 and August 12. Registration for the 2017-2018 academic year will take place at the end of summer.