Stepping into a researcher’s shoes

How to encourage new scientific vocations among the youngest, and fight against gender bias?. During this day, our budding scientists were confronted with concrete biology questions in a research environment.This visit was prepared by work in class on the scientific approach (finding what's in "mysterious boxes") and on demystifying of the image of the scientist (young women also can be scientists!). The children made 4 experiments corresponding to as many fields of biology: 1. "life cycles" to understand the concept of development, and to observe embryos under binocular lenses; 2. "But what are these long paws for?" where, from the observation of the gerris (commonly called water spiders), the children have learned to make hypotheses and to put them into practice; 3. "Insect identikits": the children classified insects, pointed characteristics common to each group, and made prototypes out of modeling clay; 4. "Microbes are (also) our friends", from a microbiota harvested from everyday objects, children learnt how to adopt hygiene reflexes and also understood that not all bacteria are dangerous.