APPLES, BANANAS & VITAMINS.....OH MY! ~ NUTRITION CHAPTER

We stayed home with colds today.  Well, the girls & I did.  The boys were still full of energy.  I was determined not to lose another complete day of school as we did on Tuesday.  The boys & I managed to finish our science module and even had fun doing it.  Win-win.  They always love hands on learning and we inserted as much as possible into our reading today.

 First we read about proteins, bad fats, good fats, calories and energy.  Then we learned what that means in our every day lives.  The boys selected cans from the pantry and we talked about the nutrition labels.  They learned their importance and how to accurately read and understand them.  The second time around they went back to the pantry to select two new cans.  They had to guess which can had the most or least of specific categories without looking at the labels.  It was neat seeing how close they were in their guesses.

 We then went on to learn about different vitamins.  They have been taking extra Vitamin C lately and were curious about it.  This experiment caught their attention.  To illustrate the "powers" of Vitamin C we did these two experiments.  First we cut up and apple.  On one slice we poured lemon juice which was our Vitamin C.  The other apple we left alone.

 Here is Bugsy writing up the labels.

Next we sliced up part of a banana.  On 3 slices we sprinkled a crushed Vitamin C tablet.  The other slices were left plain.  We then waited to see what would happen to both our apples and our bananas.

 We noticed that right away the apple with no lemon juice started to turn brown.  We learned that it is because of the oxygen.  The lemon juice is an antioxidant.  It stops the oxidation process and helps to keep the cell walls from breaking down.  

The bananas did the same thing.  It was neat to see that the Vitamin C in both experiments, though in different forms, worked the same.  

Our next experiment will be to test foods for Vitamin C.  We will do that one as soon as I buy some Iodine.  We're all looking forward to it.  =)  What experiments have you enjoyed and learned from lately?