The Messy Homeschool Mom: Funschooling: Edible Animal Cell Model

Here at the Messy Homeschool House live 2 science nuts. Me and Baby Girl love science projects, and the messier the better! She is particularly interested in Zoology and asked for a zoological curriculum for this year. We used Apologia last year (which we liked, but wasn't quite what we were looking for) and so I went searching. I found Zoology for Kids by Josh and Bethanie Hestermann. I will do an in depth review later, but for now, its awesome!

In chapter 1 it talks about cells and their parts and functions. The very first project in the book is making an edible cell model - made of cake. This is SO up my alley! So today was the day!

We started by making a basic boxed cake. I decided to split one box and not layer the cake, but you could definitely do it on a layered cake if you chose. It was just easier for me to give each kid one layer and go from there. The cakes are kinda low, but they have SO. MUCH. FROSTING.

The premise is simple, each layer or candy represents a part of the cell. So, observe:

Applying the cytoplasm

The Plasma Membrane

The Nucleus

Adding Organelles now:

Endoplasmic Reticulum

Hard to see, but she added sprinkle "ribosomes"

A Golgi body

And she finished it off with tootsie roll mitochonridion and M&M lysosomes

And this is the finished project! She did amazing on this. I didn't touch this at all, it was entirely her project. I just read the directions and she did the rest. This is a great project for kids as young as 6 or 7.

Ain't it purdy?

Now, Buds has a food dye allergy, so a lot of the candy on Baby Girl's cake was a no go for him. I gave him some turbinado sugar instead of sprinkles and some sesame sticks instead of gummy worms. He wasn't quite ready to follow all of the directions, but he did a really good job with what I gave him. I think you could use pretzel sticks and other things for kids with similar allergies, or just get alternatives from the health food store.