Bodies: Lesson 3 - Microbes

On October 8, we met to discuss germs and microbes. We started off the session by talking about how our bodies are made of cells, but that cells are too small to see without strong microscopes. Although we can't see most cells with our at-home microscopes, we did look at hair, fingernail clippings, and tooth guk, provided by an accommodating Lily. Which is not to imply that I thought she had more to share than anyone else, she was just the most willing to let me scrape her teeth. :)






While three kids looked at the microscopes and drew what they saw, the other three drew what they thought germs looked like.

Next we decided to collect some germs and grow them in a petri dish in an agar medium. To show that cleaning does eliminate germs, we took two samples from each area - one before and one after cleaning it.



Our samples came from:



The Toilet - before (section 1) and after cleaning (section 2)



The garbage can - before (section 3) and after cleaning (section 4)



Under a fingernail (section 5) and after cleaning (section 6)

Apparently I'm not so great at growing germs, though - I intended to show them the colonies of bacteria the next week, but nothing grew, I think because I kept the petri dish in a place that's too cold. We'll try again sometime and see if we can grow some nasty bugs.

Then I showed them pictures of and we talked about the kinds of germs we're most likely to meet: bacteria, viruses, and fungi. We compared the kids' drawings of germs to pictures of real germs, and I have to say, the kids' imaginations meet the reality pretty well!

Fiona's looked to me most like a staph infection:




Jack, Caiden and Spencer drew germs that looked like bacteria:



Lily drew a scary-looking virus:



And Sarah was into the fungi:




And keep in mind that they drew these before I showed them the pictures of the real germs! Pretty creative! We also talked about how to keep germs at bay.

The last 15 minutes we played "sneeze tag" on the front lawn. It's kind of like regular tag, except that we call it sneeze tag. Yeah, I was too lazy to make up rules, so sue me.

Thanks, everyone, for another fun week!