Pumpkin Decomposition
Inspired by fungi week in the Exploring Nature With Children curriculum and the book Rotten by Anita Sanchez, we decided to take a closer look at the process of decomposition. Owen and Madelyn had a lot of questions about how things decompose differently in different environments. We decided to set up an experiment to test out how environmental factors would impact the decomposition process. We decided to use pumpkin since we were planning to carve pumpkins around the same time but this experiment could be done with just about any food source. As a family we brainstormed the conditions we could easily test.
WHAT WE CAME UP WITH,
outdoor in soil
in the refrigerator
at room temperature
anaerobic (absence of oxygen)
in water at room temperature
I created a table to record our hypothesis and our daily observations in each of our nature journals (read about our nature journals here). We came up with our hypothesis independently and recorded them in our journals. We talked about what scientists would look for when observing for signs of decomposition. They naturally focused on using the five senses. We all agreed that tasting pumpkin in the process of decomposition probably wasn’t a good idea so we ruled that one out. We also talked about using adjectives to describe our observations. Many of the entries are short descriptions or a list of adjectives to describe the pumpkin.
Each evening before our bedtime routine, we pulled out our nature journals and gathered our pumpkin pieces. We took turns observing the pumpkin from each of the conditions and recorded our observations. The discussions were my absolute favorite part. I loved watching them look closely and share their findings. They were so invested in this experiment and their curiosity was contagious. They asked that we take turns reading our recorded observations before tucking our journals away for the night, so that is exactly what we did. I delighted in hearing random comments throughout the day about being real scientists or ideas for their next experiment.
After five days of observation, we thought we had our answer. We kept the room temperature and soil pieces for a little longer just to confirm. We came to declare that room temperature allowed our pumpkin to decompose quicker than the other conditions. We discussed that it being fall, the temperature outside could have slowed the process down a little. I posed the question, if the temperature outside was hot would that have changed those results? Owen immediately made the connection that our refrigerator piece was the slowest at decomposing and the outdoor temperature was similar to the refrigerator at night. They have decided to try this again in the summer. All in all, this was such a fun experiment to introduce the scientific method and to observe decomposition.
If you do your own experiments we’d love to hear how they went or any tips or tricks you might have! Comment below or tag us on Instagram, @playbeyondthelines.