Our Germ Experiment

As you can imagine, in a Kindergarten classroom we are always reminding the children to wash their hands throughout the day.  We have been practising how to thoroughly wash our hands while we sing the alphabet song in our head for many months now. (We sing the song to ensure that we are washing long enough, i.e., about 20 seconds.) 

In addition, we have explained that when we wash our hands, we are getting rid of germs that might make us sick if the germs get inside our bodies.  The germs on our hands are invisible to our eyes, but we did an experiment to grow the germs so we could see them.

Here are the results of our experiment:

                       Last Thursday, half the class touched this slice of bread with 'dirty hands'  (they did not wash their hands).  We saw dark, mould spots on both sides of the bread  after one week.

The other half of the class washed their hands with soap and water before they touched this slice of bread.  After one week, we saw one small mould spot on only one side of the slice of bread.

Hopefully, this experiment helped the children understand why it is important to wash your hands thoroughly so you can get rid of the germs.  

(A big thank you to one of our student's mother, Ms. M., for sending us a link to a version of this experiment.)