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Primary schools in the Netherlands lack practical courses and the theory about biology is also not very extensive. In order to give kids more knowledge about biology and in our particular case microbiology, we came up with something new:
Our team visited several primary schools for a guest lesson about bacteria and fungi. In mainly group 4 and 5 (eight to ten year olds) the children 'caught' bacteria, made puzzels, viewed samples under the microscope and in one and a half hours learned more about the little creatures around us.
On one of the schools we did a MiniGEM competition. In this competition the children were asked to draw what they learned during the guest lesson using their imagination. In this way we could see what topics in the lesson intrigued the children most. Most of the 275 drawings showed a lab or bacterium and there were only a few children that drew fungi. Some of the pictures are displayed in the header of this outreach wiki page.
The drawings of the six MiniGEM winners can be found under the button Winners & Puzzles. The winners received a Giant Microbe. There is also the possibility to download and print the puzzles of the guest lesson.
