Cake Cells

My students can earn the chance to do science labs throughout each unit we study. When I say earn, I mean that our program is almost entirely incentive and natural consequence programming. Therefore, if they do not complete the coursework or have intense behaviors, they do not get to participate in the "fun". Today was a day I had formed a fun science project for the kiddos.

We've been studying Eukaryotic Cells (plant and animal cells). They've read about them, talked about them, colored and labeled them; now we were going to make a model using cake and lots of candy! Unfortunately, only 2 of my students made the incentive today. But those 2 students had a blast. When another teacher or staff would come in, they could tell what each part of the cake/topping was what cell part and they could tell the function. Best learning activity I've ever done in my short 3 months as a teacher.

Since there were only 2 students doing the project, they each got their own cell! The circle is the animal cell and the square is the plant cell (you know, because plant cells have a rigid cell wall!) Here are the before cells with their organelles.

The boys working hard! Neither of them have frosted a cake before, so to put the cell membrane on the cytoplasm (frosting on the cake) we needed to have an important "how to frost a cake" lesson. 

Each time we put a new organelle (candy) on, we would discuss what it looks like and what the function is. Here is a list of the candy/organelle we used. Tony and I stood in the candy aisle for a while figuring out what they should be.

Cake-Cytoplasm
Frosting-Cell membrane
Yoke Peppermint Patty-Nucleus
Sour gummy worms-Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum
Gummy worms-Endoplasmic Reticulum
Peach ring-Golgi Complex
M&Ms-Lysosomes
Ghost marshmallows-vacuole
Orange slices-mitochondrion
Sprinkles-ribosomes
Green jelly beans-chloroplasts in the plant cell

Here are the finished products! We shared our cells with other staff. Everyone enjoyed their delicious cells!