Friday, February 4, 2011

Edible Cell

In Oak Meadow 5, we've moved on to Life Science. On Friday, we studied cells and made an edible cell. This was a really cool activity that made learning the parts of a cell a little less intimidating.

We started by gathering items from the kitchen to represent the organelles. We used a blueberry for the nucleus, a strip of fruit roll-up for the microtubles, Mike and Ikes for mitochondria, and rock candy for vacuoles. Not surprisingly, the candy didn't hold up too well in the Jell-o, but we worked with what we had because we were sort of snowed in.




Jell-o was our cytoplasm.


We poured the Jell-o in a quart-sized Zip-Loc bag (which was the cell membrane) and added the "organelles". As we added each item, we talked again about what it does. I don't have a photo of us actually creating the cell, because we had a slight mishap just as I was going to shoot the picture. Let's just say that cytoplasm on the floor, cabinets and Oak Meadow Science book makes for a sticky situation.

Here is our finished cell, which no one will eat because it looks too gross.



It's even worse than those nasty congealed salads that people of a certain generation like to bring to our church pot-luck dinners. All of our organelles, except for the nucleus, either dissolved completely or look really anemic. Oh well, it wouldn't be an Otherwise Educating science project if it worked well. The cell may not be edible, as the book suggested, but Thing 3 does have a really firm grasp on how the main parts of a cell work together. He also learned that rock candy completely disappears if you let it sit in Jell-o too long. Where else is he going to learn that?

2 comments:

  1. Hahaha - before I even got to your comment at the end I said to Aubrey "Look, another science experiment gone awry" :) Looking forward to these kinds of projects in the years to come :)

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  2. I've seen this popping up all over the internet - I think it is a great learning project.

    Yet...eating it? I get the concern HA! Awesome.

    You are doing way better at the projects than I am. I'm slacking off even in social studies/history and I can't believe that. I think I'll go into the summer with lots of what we are doing to extend the lessons.

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