We had another fun week exploring what it means for something to be alive. First, we followed up with our lesson from last week. After comparing our bacteria samples (we grew some fascinating looking bacteria!), we needed to kill the colonies. Some of the kids were pretty excited to don face masks and gloves and attack their petri dish with a bleach mixture. Our next activity was working with yeast. We tested whether yeast meets a couple of the characteristics of life: growth and metabolism. They made predictions about whether or not the yeast would feed on sugar. They worked in groups and after mixing yeast with various temperatures of water, and then adding sugar to half the mixtures, they watched as the balloons over the bottle mouths inflated (or didn't), indicating a metabolic reaction where CO2 was released. They recorded their observations over the next 30 minutes and started to make early conclusions about what was occurring and how the varying water temperatures and presence or absence of sugar affected the yeast. I wish that they could have observed their yeast longer so they could see the full results, but have included a picture of one of the set-ups from a few hours later. We will talk more about the results from this experiment next week. I can't wait to hear their ideas! Finally, we talked for a moment about the applications of yeast. They got to meet Jack, my sourdough starter, and saw a couple different stages of the yeast after being fed, as well as getting to sample a little bread made from the starter. I have included a video below on the history of bread which we had planned to watch in class, but ran out of time. I hope some of the kids had their interest sparked and might like to learn a little more about this. Follow up ideas: Articles: Fungus Facts for Kids Videos: Fermentation of Yeast and Sugar (this is basically what we did in class) History of Bread Activities: Make bread together! If you don't have a favorite recipe, try one of the ones below. If anyone would like to try their hand at sourdough, I would be happy to share some of my starter with you. French Bread Easy, Soft, 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread NYT No-Knead Bread Check out this site for more activity ideas around yeast
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May 2020
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