The Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley’s public science center, will host its third annual Earth Day Celebration on April 26, preceded by a range of family activities starting this coming Saturday, March 29.

The Earth Day event will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the science center and will feature more than a dozen organizations from UC Berkeley and across the Bay Area. Community members will explore environmental science through hands-on activities, music and educational programs.

The celebration will feature a performance by the Grammy- and Emmy-winning Alphabet Rockers, including artist Gina Madrid, who will debut a Spanish-language version of the song H2Flow. The project, sponsored by the East Bay Municipal Utility District, traces the journey of drinking water from the Mokelumne River to the tap. The song encourages listeners to drink tap water instead of bottled water and highlights the importance of clean water access.

The English version of H2Flow was developed in 2025 for World Water Day in collaboration with EBMUD and students from Piedmont Avenue Elementary School in Oakland.

Hissing cockroaches, traditional games, and more

Visitors to the science center will be able to participate in interactive exhibits, examine dinosaur bones with a paleontologist and handle live hissing cockroaches with the UC Berkeley Entomology Club.

In the weeks leading up to the celebration, the Lawrence will host Earth Month programming at the Outdoor Nature Lab. Weekly activities include learning the traditional Ohlone game Stick Dice, exploring native plants through a sensory scavenger hunt, studying Ohlone plant knowledge and creating biodiversity-themed nature journals.

“I’m excited to participate in the Earth Day event at The Lawrence Hall of Science and share more about Latino Outdoors and our mission of connecting communities to the outdoors,” said Aurora Cortes, coordinator for Latino Outdoors, one of the many organizations partnering in the programs. “I hope that attendees, especially young kids, engage with our sensory based activity and learn about the importance of taking care of our Earth!”

The Earth Day event was launched three years ago to connect the Lawrence and UC Berkeley communities and highlight organizations working to protect the natural world. Organizers say the event has since expanded significantly, with more than double the number of participating groups compared with its first year.

A complete calendar of Earth Day and Earth Month events can be found on the Lawrence Hal of Science website.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.