Your student swabs up to six household surfaces, including doorknobs, faucet handles, light switches, and phone screens, streaks each sample onto a labeled agar plate, and observes bacterial colony growth daily for three to five days. The observation table tracks plate number, location sampled, date, and daily notes across five columns, giving grades 4 through 7 a structured, repeatable way to compare microbial activity across high-touch and low-touch surfaces.

Growing bacteria from different locations sits naturally inside a microbiology unit study or a broader health and hygiene sequence. It works as a standalone multi-day investigation too, since the analysis questions push your student to explain why some surfaces harbor more bacteria, which surfaces showed the least growth, and how household hygiene habits connect to what they actually observed. Completing the draw-your-results section asks them to sketch and label colony types, moving the lesson from passive recording into scientific illustration.