This week Owen been rowing Mrs. Katz an Tush for his Five in a Row unit. In our story Mrs. Katz is Jewish so we have been learning about persecution of minorities, immigration and also touched on the Jewish exodus from Egypt. We have been reading lots of books about Jewish traditions and customs. For science we talked about yeast and how the bread of Passover contains no yeast so it is flat. We also learned about the different properties of yeast and how it grows in things containing sugar. To demonstrate this we tried an experiment I found in the Five in a Row archives.
We used an empty plastic bottle, warm water, sugar, yeast, and a balloon.
We filled the bottle about 2/3 of the way full with warm water, added some sugar and shook the bottle so the sugar would dissolve. Next we added the yeast and gently swirled the bottle to mix it into the water/sugar mixture.
Then we put the balloon around the opening.
The kids were amazed to see the balloon expand over the next 20 minutes or so. Fun stuff!!
