Extinguishing a Candle

There are several ways to extinguish a candle and the other day I asked my two daughters (ages 6 and 3) to tell me how they think you can make a candle go out.  They came up with two:

1.  Blow it out.

2.  Dump water in the candle.

Ok, excellent ways to extinguish a candle.  Then I asked them, if I don't want to make a water mess and I don't want to blow it out, how can I extinguish the candle?  They thought for awhile and neither came up with anything.  So at this point I showed them a third way, as shown in our video below.

A flame needs oxygen to survive.  Without oxygen, the flame goes out.  When the lid was placed on the candle, the flame used the remaining oxygen in the jar and as the oxygen was used up, the candle began to dim and eventually go out.  My daughters thought this was cool!  This is a very quick experiment that teaches kids some basic science.