Forum:Demonstrating Exponential Growth In Pre-School

Question

[Asaf]

Hi all,

My kid is in pre-school and on each week one of the kids presents a profession, mine chose to present microbiologist (I tried to talk him out of it). Besides demonstrating what microbiologists do, they (we) need to come up with some activity so I will give him some plates to grow bacteria on but I thought I'll come up with another more "active" activity, maybe demonstrating how fast bacteria grow. Any suggestion for how to do that? Any suggestion for other bacteria-related activity? The kids are 5-6 years old.

Thanks

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

you should ask http://biology.stackexchange.com/

[Madelaine Gogol]

Memorable related activities from when I was a kid - streaking out plates with q-tips from different parts of the classroom, girls and boys bathrooms, etc...

Pond scum under a microscope, though maybe too young for that?

Maybe you could have all the kids on one side and sort of send over more kids to one side or within a tape circle, doubling the number every time? It would get crowded pretty fast.

[Asaf]

Nice ideas, thanks. I have a microscope but it's pretty hard to find a pond in Israel these days...

Answer 1

[Mary]

Have you seen the demos of a laser pointer and a drop of pond water? I bet that would interest kids. Of course--safety first--no laser pointers to eyeballs.

Here's one sample: http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=129632 and another setup with less overhead:

I think just getting across the idea of teeny things you can't normally see live in water might be sufficient at that level.

[Asaf]

Wow! I hope this will work, looks too good to be true