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I recently watched the History Channel’s Life After People on DVD*, which combines visual effects and interviews with leading experts to show what happens to the planet if humans vanished. It’s basically the story of how civilization would decay, and how Mother Nature would reclaim and renew the Earth. The thought provoking documentary made me wonder what kind of children’s science activities could you do – besides watching the Life After People DVD of course – to explore the concept of decay. And what kind of children’s cooking activities could show you how you preserve food?

What decays?

• Build backyard compost bins or indoor vermicomposters (worm composters) for food and yard waste and watch the decomposition.
• Walk outside in the woods, the beach, or a park and look for evidence of natural materials like leaves, dead trees, and cut grass which are decaying. Even rocks break down into pebbles and sand. Contrast with man-made waste like glass and plastics that do not decay. Find some man-made materials that do decay like metal (rust) or paper.
• If you can stomach it, visit a local taxidermist to find out how the flesh is removed from animals. You can see the defleshing process online, but you may not want to share the pictures with the kids. Pretty graphic, but some kids love the gross out factor.
• Put a few food items on the counter and watch them decay – bread gets moldy, fruit turns into rotten mush, and if you’ve watched Super Size Me, you know that McDonald’s french fries don’t decay. (Don’t let this experiment go too long or you’ll have a smelly room full of fruit flies.)

And how can we prevent decay?

• Take a piece of untreated wood. Cover half with a some sort of deck sealant and the other half without. Leave outside for a few weeks in the sun and rain. Observe how to the two halves look compared to each other after being exposed to the elements. Theorize how the sealant prevents the wood from weathering and decaying. What do you think is more harmful to the wood – the sun, freezing and thawing, or getting wet and drying? (Probably all three.)
• Talk about the different ways we preserve food – salting, smoking, cooking, drying, freezing, canning, pickling, and refrigerating. Even cheese, ice cream and yogurt making are just ways to preserve milk. To explore this further, here’s a children’s food preservation science activity link. For cooking activities you could: 
  • learn how to make fruit leather 
  • make some pickles under three hours
  • make some homemade yogurt with a yogurt machine or make yogurt with a without a yogurt machine

(*Thanks to Attention!PR for the review copy of Life After People.)

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