Icky Sticky Fingers Part 1

Every year my husband, two kids, and I go camping in Lake Tahoe with my parents during the summer. We soak up the rays, bury our feet in the sand, eat way too many smores, and enjoy our time together.

This year, my mom and I spent some time putting together a healthy habits mini-unit for her first grade classroom (which will be up on my Teacher Pay Teacher shop soon). This mini-unit focuses on the importance of washing your hands in order to minimize the spreading of germs. This experiment will provide her students with a visual model that there are small organisms, commonly known as "germs", (bacteria, fungi, viruses) living on their hands and that certain organisms can make you sick if ingested. Most of the organisms that will grow on the bread will be fungal since bacteria and viruses have specific living requirements. Who knows, maybe she'll have fewer absences throughout the year!

Since we were going to be camping together for almost two weeks, we decided to try it out with my own kids, because when are kids more germy and dirty than when they're camping?

The setup:
We gathered five pieces of whole wheat bread because there aren't as many preservatives as there are in white bread (less preservatives means more mold growth in a shorter amount of time). In addition to bread, we got 5 zipped baggies and a spray bottle of water. Voila! We're ready to run an experiment with two very eager and dirty little munchkins.

The experimental process:

First we rounded up two very dirty little kids.

Ewww!

Next we rubbed their grubby little fingers over both sides of freshly purchased slices of whole wheat bread. 

Then my 3 year old son lightly sprayed one side of each of the bread slices since moisture helps promote mold growth.

Now that the first part of the experiment was done, it was time to herd the kiddos into my parents' trailer for a thorough washing of their hands. To make sure that their fingers were really clean, we followed the traditional soap and water regimen with a little hand sanitizer. 

With their clean hands, probably the cleanest they've been since we started camping, we began part two of the experiment.

Look at those cute, clean little paws!

We had the kids rub their clean hands all over both sides of a new slice of whole wheat bread, then we placed the slices of bread in new, labeled zipped baggies. Each baggie got a small spritz of water, just as we did with the dirty slices of bread.

All five samples were placed in a brown paper bag and left to sit in a warm dark place until any mold growth is noticed. 

How long will it take? We have no idea. Don't you just love science?!? We're going to wait until we notice any mold growth and then at that point set certain amount of time, like 5 days or so. It is important that all of the bread have the same amount of time to grow mold so that we can accurately observe and compare the amount of mold growing. Ultimately, we're going to compare the mold growth on the dirty and clean slices of bread to a control; the slice of bread that hasn't been handled. This comparison will help us see how much and how fast the mold grows on bread with varying amount of contamination/handling on it in a certain amount of time.

Now all there is left to do is wait....

Expected Outcome:

If all goes as expected, the dirty slice of bread should grow the most mold in the same amount of time as the clean slice of bread and the control slice of bread because the kids transferred additional "germs" (bacteria, fungi, etc.) to the bread when they touched it with dirty hands. The clean slice of bread and the control slice of bread will grow mold as well, however it should be less because fewer "germs" were transferred to the bread. Only time will tell...

Updates will be coming soon!