Every year, in February, when the month-long SciTech Festival kicks off, Science Vortex Executive Director Laurie Altringer loves seeing children hovering around the Science Vortex at Cottonwood Community School, figuring out if they want a lab coat or a crystal growing kit.
“It’s very fun to see the kids’ sense of accomplishment and pride when they turn in their buttons and get to pick out their prize,” she said. “It’s always fun to see how long they take to pick out their prize.”
The Verde Valley SciTech Festival this year has 75 events throughout the region for children to choose from in the Sedona, Camp Verde, Cottonwood and Beaver Creek libraries, elementary schools, parks and other miscellaneous venues.
Attending an event gets each kid one button, and to get a prize, they need to turn in six buttons.
“It is part of a bigger statewide festival run through SciTech Institute in Phoenix, and they are celebrating their 15th year of the festival, and we are celebrating at least our eighth year,” Altringer said. “But it is our sixth year having the festival in this format where we have a calendar of events.”
Other festivals throughout the state do not run a full month nor do they have as many events. The calendar and full list are available at sciencevortex.org/vvscitechfestival2026.
The Cottonwood Public Library’s calendar is filled with upward of 20 events throughout the four weeks part of the festival.
“We always have story time, we always have family craft, we always have programming for tweens and teens, but in the month of February, we devote as much of our programming as possible to being science themed,” Cottonwood Public Library Youth Services Coordinator Danielle Ave said.
Story times are on Thursdays at 10 a.m. and family crafts are Fridays at 3:30 p.m.
“A lot of people don’t necessarily realize that their teens could come hang out here,” Ave said. “We always have teen programming anyway, but for this month, on [Feb.] 13th, we’re doing Teen Rubber Band Racers, where they can make a car that races with the power of rubber band. … And we also are doing heat and repeat heat and repeat slime on the 25th, and that’s where they get to make a slime that is heat reactive and they get to take it home.”
While the festival is throughout February, the kickoff event, which will be the biggest one with the most organizers and volunteers, will take place at the Science Vortex in Cottonwood on Saturday, Jan. 31.
“We are going to have over 20 STEM organizations with tables and hands-on activities,” Altringer said. “We will have a planetarium that Meteor Crater is bringing, set up in the gym with shows every 20 minutes. We will have a ‘science is fun’ show with [Science Vortex] Chief Science Officers with liquid nitrogen and dry ice.”
“We have a very strong STEM ecosystem,” Altringer said. “SciTech Institute said that this is the biggest festival that they have statewide, the Verde Valley, beating Maricopa [County].”
Camp Verde Community Library Children’s Librarian Letticia Ancira said, while the ecosystem is strong, it still needs to be nurtured in children’s education.
“I, as a children’s librarian, have partnered with this event because it’s important, and because I want to do something for the kids in my community,” she said.
The event she’s most looking forward to is the “Create an Animal or Plant” event the library will host on Thursday, Feb. 19, from 4 to 5 p.m.
She said she hears kids talk about creating characters and surroundings in video games. There will be SciTech events at the library every Thursday.
The animal and plant event lets children imagine a completely new species.
“How it connects to STEM, is that they have to know the environment that it needs to survive,” she said. “It’s not just creating a new plant, but it’s creating it in its environment so it can succeed.”
She said she’s excited about “getting the kids to think about those things and becoming somewhat successful — and how did you have the connection? You just don’t create something in the real world. In the real world, you create something that is meeting the environment.”
Ancira, who translated the calendar and all the event descriptions into Spanish, said the wide variety made her wish she had more of this when she was younger.
“I got to read the different events,” she said. “So I’m like, ‘I even want to go to some of these.’”
The festival is organized by the Verde Valley STREAM Council, which stands for Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Art and Math.
“It started actually as a grant funding organization, they were part of a greater National Science Foundation grant, and so that’s how Verde Valley STREAM Council began,” Altringer said. “But now we don’t have funding, but we it’s just made up of passionate STEM Educators from a number of different organizations, and we meet quarterly throughout the year.”
“The grants that Laurie secures help us purchase education supplies for our programs,” Red Rock State Park Environmental Education Ranger Riley Scantlebury, “with some supplies then becoming part of our field trip programs at the park, as well as being reused for future SciTech Festival programs. This year, in addition to attending the kickoff event at Science Vortex on January 31st, we’re putting on three programs.”
Events cover all STREAM topics from meeting and learning about local snakes from State Park Rangers to cartooning different science-related topics.
“I’ll try and steer the kids to drawing science related things; this usually will involve robots and space aliens as they’re always fun to draw,” wrote Sedona-based cartoonist Jan Marc “The Janimal” Quisumbing, the scheduling coordinator at Community Library Sedona.”
“Thursday, Feb. 12, we’ll be at the Cottonwood Public Library for their Preschool Storytime with Moonlight, who is a rescued Western screech owl,” Scantlebury said. “We’ll be reading a storybook about nocturnal animals, learning about owls, and sending the kids home with a take-home owl craft project. Moonlight will also be at the kickoff event on Jan. 31.”
