LaPaz Home Learning

Starting off the new year here at Lapaz Farm with a renewed commitment to doing what we do best…projects!!!!We’ve set up our new school areas with hands-on learning in mind. We have work stations for every subject! A nature study center, a geo center (for geology and geography) a math lab, a living history corner, and a language lab! (We have yet to set up our home altar for religious studies, but it’s coming!)

To kick it off, we have finally begun our big biology project I had planned way back when. We began by learning about the 5 kingdoms (and other approaches such as 8 kingdoms, 3 domains, etc…. Superboy learned the basic shapes of bacteria with his cards and definitions. We learned about harmful and beneficial bacteria and then made a batch of yogurt to test out our knowledge, using the new yogurt maker I got for Christmas. Yummy!It turned out fabulous!
Then we had a lot of fun with this bacteria experiment:

Superboy investigated which disinfectant worked the best to kill bacteria. He melted agar and poured 10 plates (aka petri dishes) and let them cool. He then made a broth with water, some yogurt, and some soil, in hopes of getting a variety of bacteria types. He put 9 ml of the broth into cups and added 1 ml of each disinfectant into the cups.

He used the following disinfectants:

Rubbing Alcohol

Iodine

Dial Soap

bleach (10% solution)

disinfectant wipes (store brand, squeezed the liquid from them)

Dawn dishwashing liquid

Swirl to mix. Then he innoculated the plates with each of the disinfected mixtures and l plate with the plain broth as a control. Let incubate for 5 days in a warm dark place.

Results were a bit surprising! Compared to the control, the alcohol, Iodine, and wipes did little to disinfect the broth. The dial soap and the bleach were the clear winners, with the Dawn soap in third(much of what you see in the Dawn plate is just condensation in the dish). We looked at some samples under our microscope and saw the expected bacillus from the yogurt, plus many, many dancing, swirling cyanobacteria from the soil! They sure are active little beasties! What a difference to observe them live rather than from pictures or prepared slides!
Then for fun we decided to investigate the wives tale that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s.

We swabbed Superboy’s mouth (pre-toothbrushing for fairness), our Golden retriever Buddy’s mouth, and left one plate clean as a control.

Results:

Superboy had a few more spots, but Buddy’s entire plate is covered with a thin white film of growth. Whose mouth is cleaner? You be the judge!

More fun tomorrow! And I’ll tell you about the other projects he has going as well!