.) The book didn’t have a whole lot of hands-on ideas so I turned to my wonderful friend Rebecca who is a biology teacher extraordinaire! 🙂 I ended up with 3 small-ish ideas that worked great for this lesson!!
Activity 1: This wasn’t really an experiment, but I told the kids we were going to start today’s lesson with a snack! yay! I gave them yogurt and cheese sticks…after they had been eating for a few moments, I asked them, “do you know what you are eating??” Of course they told me cheese and yogurt.
So, I asked, do you know what is IN the yogurt and cheese??
BACTERIA!! (ha!!) they were like, “oooh, gross!!”
So, we had a great discussion on GOOD and BAD bacteria and how our body NEEDS the good!!
Activity 2: I poured glitter on their hands and told them the glitter was representing GERMS. Then, at the bathroom sink we tried washing our hands in cold water, using warm water and finally using soap with warm water…and we noticed that we have to wash a LOT longer than we would have thought to get all the germs off!!
Activity 3: My friend Rebecca gave me a “recipe” for creating your own petri dishes for collecting bacteria so that I didn’t have to purchase a kit. THIS LINK explains how to do it!!
So, we took samples (by using a q-tip to swab) all over our house, including the fridge handle, front door knob, toilet, sinks, and our own mouths!! Then, we put the tray of petri dishes in a dark closet to wait a few days and see what grows…
After a few days, guess what we found? Bacteria! ha! And, the worst spots? Not the toilet!! The worst spots were our fridge handle and our front door knob! Interesting…and kind of gross at the same time. 🙂
All of these are EXCELLENT ways to teach about bacteria- thank you SO MUCH for posting the Petri Dish recipe too- I will be looking forward to trying these out with my own kiddos someday!
I just happened to be looking for a 100 day bible reading plan and was so blessed by every single tidbit of your website I had to read more! Thank you