Make Your Own Mold: A Simple Science Fair Project

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In this science fair project, you are going to find out how mold grows. Mold is a spore that lands on

food and grows, leaving the food inedible. You may have seen mold growing on your bread, leaving it spotted with green or white pieces. If you haven’t ever seen mold, this is your chance to ‘grow’ your own.

This science fair project is great for students in grade 1 through 3 to try. Younger students should have their parents or teacher supervise the experiment for safety reasons. This project is easy to do, and only needs a few common household items, including a slice of bread, a food storage bag that can be sealed, a cotton swab, an empty milk carton and masking tape.

Gather all of the supplies that you need, wash your hands with soap and water, and the science fair experiment can begin! The first step is to find some dust. Take your cotton swab and find a dusty area in your house and collect some dust. After that, you are going to lightly smear the dust onto the bread. The next step is to put the piece of bread into the zipper bag and then put it into the milk carton and seal it with a piece of masking tape.

Now, the waiting game begins. Wait at least two days and then carefully take the bread out of the container. What happened? What can you see? Is there mold on it yet? If there is, make a drawing of your bread, marking down where the mold has grown (you should make a drawing of each side of the bread). Then, put the bread back in the milk carton and wait another day. If there is no mold, put the bread back, and wait another day. Continue this project for one week, making new pictures for each of the days that you take the bread out of the milk carton. What do you see? How moldy does the bread get?

Make sure that you don’t eat this bread, because, although some molds are used in medicines and are healthy, a lot of them can be dangerous for our health. Also, make sure to wash your hands before and after working with the bread, and to not take the bread out of the plastic bag.

If you aren’t a very good artist, you can always take pictures of your bread. Your science teacher will be interested in knowing why the mold grew, and to find out your results. Did the mold grow faster or slower than you thought it would?