Amy Brown Science: Let's Make a Mold Terrarium!

Yucky!

Ooey!

Gooey!

This was a new activity for me, and I have to say, my students really enjoyed it! I wanted to do something different this year as I neared the point in my course where I teach the fungi. So I decided to have my students build a mold terrarium. I wasn't exactly sure how the idea would go over with my students, but I decided to give it a go anyway. MY STUDENTS LOVED IT!

No fancy materials are required. You only need a glass jar, some water, and some left over foods. In order to get some good pictures for this blog post, I used a large plastic tray that had a clear lid on it. And I used quite a few foods as a test to see which would be good suggestions to the students for which foods they should choose for their terrarium.

From start to finish, I would allow at least 12 days. Nothing much happens at first, but when the molds start to grow.... WOWEE!...they really take off.

Enjoy these pictures!!

Day 1: Set Up Day! These are still good enough to eat!

Day 3: The cucumber was the first to go!

Day 4: The cheese is getting a bit "iffy".

Day 11: Very nice, huh??

Day 11: Wow! What a hairy monster!
And there are several different kinds of mold visible.

Believe it or not, the smell was not too bad. The only time I really noticed the smell was when I removed the lid to take these cool pictures. TIP: Do not use any foods that have eggs, meat or fish! YUK!

I also prepared (IMHO) a pretty good set of handouts to go along with this activity. One of my students commented, "Why can't we ever do anything just for fun?" The handouts included a procedure page, a pre-lab sheet where I asked the kids to make predictions about which food would mold first, etc, a data table for recording daily observations, and 2 pages of final observation and analysis questions.

I created two different versions of the activity, one for high school students and one for upper elementary/middle school students.