Making Science Creative With Edible Plant and Animal Cells

Happy Monday! Thank you so much to Brooke Brown from http://teachoutsidethebox.com/ for sharing this link up. I am so excited to be linking up with Brooke and the other hosts to give you a sneak peek of my Edible Cells activity. These activities are now posted in my Teachers Pay Teachers store Click here for creative science stuff!

This year I am teaching Science along with my favorite subject, Social Studies. I have been sharing my enthusiasm so much for American History that the kids groan when it comes time for Science! Well, I can’t have that because I’m responsible for both! So, I decided to do something crazy and use a super fun but messy activity called Edible Cells with all 3 classes I teach. Whew, I’m exhausted!

BUILD UP TO EDIBLE CELLS

I’ve been showing this Parts of a Cell Rap to my 5th graders for weeks as a preview. Warning-it is very catchy!! It will be stuck in your head all day! I have some others on my Life Science board and my go to resource Flocabulary of course has some clips: Flocab Science

Last week I did this animal and plant cell demonstration in small groups. This could also be completed as an open-ended science station. We basically took trash and made it treasure!  I used found objects to represent the parts of a cell and had students fill out a note sheet as they went. I also sent home a donation letter that day for the edible cells because I knew that this activity was already building up excitement. I told the students if they didn’t bring in the supplies we wouldn’t do the activity! So they did!

 THE BIG DAY:

Today was the day to do the activity with all three of my classes (and one of the classes BARELy got to participate due to behavior). Material set-up is a bit time consuming so this would be a great time to ask for a parent volunteer if possible. If you have students set up in groups with roles, they could take care of the prep themselves. We did this activity whole group. Depending on the level of your class, you could have students plan and design the plant and animals cell themselves. I included a few different options and suggestions for modifications with the product.

We did this activity whole group and I didn’t have any volunteers so the kids took a big part in material prep and definitely the clean up! I covered the tables with butcher paper and passed out materials family style using paper plates. And for the marshmallows, I pretty much threw them on the table. I cut paper plates into fourths and put icing on those. if you don’t have plastic knives you can always use popsicle sticks.

I had the directions on a Power Point and we went through the activity step by step. I had students draw and label a diagram of each cell directly on the paper. I snapped a quick pic and voila…..easy formative assessment! You could have them draw it on a paper to turn in after. Since we had a limited amount of time I just had them draw as they went and I gave them a plastic bag to take their cells to go!

My students really enjoyed this incredible, edible science lab and I hope yours will, too! What type of edible Science activities have you used in your class? If you use this one I would love to see pictures!!