Fall Library Center...failure

Hi friends!

I like to try new things in our library centers. A few weeks ago, I saw this pin on Pinterest.

What a cool science center for autumn! Sprouting Indian corn in water.

I began the search for Indian corn. I looked in the grocery store, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Central Market. I could not find a single ear of Indian corn.

Hmmm, well, corn is corn, right? So I bought an ear of corn at the grocery store and set up my corn science center.

I put the corn in a plastic tub with water, displayed our corn books, and asked students to write or draw predictions about what the corn would look like next week. As you can see, they jumped right in, most of them predicting it would look rotten the next week. (Okay, one student misspelled "hello" in large letters, and I crossed it out.)

I was giggling to myself, thinking about how surprised they would be when they saw those green sprouts shooting up from the ear of corn.

Well, it turns out that not all corn is created equal. I think that the ear of corn I bought at the grocery store may be genetically modified. Or something. After more than a week, it looks like this.

Not quite the dramatic change I was expecting. No roots. No shoots. Just some shriveling.

On the plus side, I had some great conversations with students about plant parts. So I can't consider it a complete failure.

And I am definitely gonna try this again next autumn. Maybe the farmer's market will have Indian corn.  I really want to see those green shoots sprouting out of an ear of corn.

I hope sharing this not-so-successful story will be an encouragement to you, my librarian friends. I love my job because I get to try new things and learn from them. All the time.

Have you learned something lately from a not-so-successful experiment? A lesson gone awry?