Snow White Experiment

I'm on fall break! Woohoo! This is the first year that my district has done fall break, and I have to say it's not shabby. I'm not hating the fact that I am on my couch with a pumpkin spice latte doing laundry while blog stalking.  :)

This past week, my students had just wrapped up their science processes unit so I decided to do a fun project to asses and give our unit some closure.

Have you ever seen this book? I bought it on Amazon and love it!

It takes a handful of popular fairy tales and gives you ideas for experiments for each one. Along with each experiment comes a handout for the students to complete and an explanation. It's fabulous!

I decided to do the Snow White experiment. In the fairy tale, Snow White lays in a glass coffin for years and is as pretty as a peach the whole time while being dead as a doornail. So I asked my students, what do you think would happen if we put an organic item in a sealed container?  My students made hypothesis and stated evidence to back it.  I then broke the students up into groups and each group mushed up a banana and put that into one bottle, broke up a piece of celery into another bottle, and then put some leaves in a third bottle (fruit, vegetable, and plant). You then put a balloon over the top of the water bottle and seal with tape. As the fruit rots, the balloon will collect the gases that the rotting food and bacteria give off.

After fall break, we are going to go back and check out our experiments. Ew. I am anticipating some disgusting outcomes especially from the banana a week old, bleh. I'll take some pictures, I'm sure you can't wait to look at them!  Have a good week!