Fungus and Mold.  Yup.

As it turns out, fungus and mold are cool.  True story.  We watched a super cool video about fungus and they wanted to watch it over and over again.  Did you know that every mushroom has about 16 BILLION spores!?  Crazy.  We also watched a cool time-lapse video of mushrooms growing.  

Whoa.  Super cool. 

Scientists write about what they see, hear, taste (no tasting during this experiment!) and feel.  They investigate and ask questions.  Scientists agree with one another, and they also disagree with one another.  They learn things from each other and their share thoughts, ideas and questions.  They label their illustrations and keep detailed notes.  

Scientists are amazing.

We started a new experiment on Friday.  Using two different kinds of bread, we put a piece of each in a separate petri dish and sprayed them with a bit of water.  Our bread samples will be kept moist (kids will determine when their bread needs water), kept in the dark (in a drawer in a cabinet), and at a fairly constant temperature.  A transparent grid will be placed over the petri dish allowing kids a way to keep track of the mold that grows.  

Here’s what we know about the two pieces of bread:

One piece has many ingredients while the other piece does not.

What will this mean?  The extra ingredients may cause the bread to NOT mold.  Why?  Preservatives.  We talked about why they are added and how they may alter mold growth.  Stay tuned!  We will keep you updated on our findings.