Today was our fourth day of school.  I used my favorite back to school science lesson (with a few improvements).  We read the book Germs Are Not for Sharing.

Then we did the apple slice and germ experiment.

 I used those cool scienctific looking clear plastic water bottles this year.  The neck on them is almost as wide as it was on the glass jars that I used in the past.  I wrote clean (with a happy face) and dirty (with a sad face) right on the bottles with a permanent marker.  Then I sliced up an apple into ten small pieces. (I have ten kids and knew they would love each getting a turn.)  I had the kids each drop one slice using their clean hands into the jar labeled "clean."  For extra good measure, I had the kids rub their hands with hand sanitizer just before doing our experiment.  Then, when we came in from the playground, I repeated everything for the "dirty" jar. (Well...I did not repeat the hand sanitizer...)  I noticed a difference in the apples before I even left this afternoon!  We will be observing our "germs" over the next couple of weeks.