Edible Animal Cells

To wrap up our cell unit Doodle Bug made an edible model of an animal cell.  I spent some time looking for ideas online and found most were made using a cookie or cake of some sorts as the base.  While cookies are okay, the end result looks pretty inedible - not something you're going for when the title of your project is edible animal cell, right?  We knew we wanted something round (because it's a well known fact that all good animal cells are round) and something that could have a lot of components but still taste good.  The final verdict was pizza and what a fine choice it was!  On our pizza cell above (sorry, we only have one picture, Doodle Bug's phone ate the rest) we have

• Crust - cell wall
• Ranch & mozzarella - cytoplasm
• Large Canadian bacon round - nucleus
• Onion round - nucleolus
• Mitochondria - Canadian bacon bits
• Vacuoles - green peppers
• Lysomes - bacon
• Ribosomes - cheddar cheese
• Rough ER - mushrooms with ribs
• Smooth ER - mushrooms without ribs
• Golgi apparatus - onion

Before putting the pizza all together Doodle Bug went over our cell diagrams in our science notebooks to be sure that all of the parts were accounted for.  Just in case you are wondering, no, this pizza does not have red sauce.  Instead we used ranch dressing - it may sound gross but it tastes great.  When I worked at my dad's pizza joint (many moons ago) this was how I made my pizzas.

If you are going to make your own version of this at home, feel free to mix up the pizza toppings.  You can add in some black olives, other colors of bell pepper and some cooked hamburger.  Just as a word of caution - ranch does not taste so good when mixed with pepperoni or sausage (but creamy Italian dressing would work just fine with them).

Spell 'n' Doodle 26

Spell 'n' Doodle Lesson 26

We're trying a new activity for spelling this week and I have dubbed it Spell 'n' Doodle.  Doodle Bug really enjoys drawing - really, really enjoys drawing.  However, Doodle Bug does not enjoy spelling - really really really does not enjoy spelling.  I've come to notice lately that our days of doing "C" and "D" in her spelling books are pretty much wasted.  She doesn't get a lot of out of those activities (things like finding the spelling words in a running list of letters and learning about words that aren't even part of our spelling lesson) and she doesn't enjoy them.  So being the caring mom (actually the mom who is sick of all of the complaining) that I am, I created a new activity for her to try out.  We're testing it out this week so there's not a lot of feedback to be had, but I am sharing the creation so you can try it out along with us.

The sample above shows you two of the cards I created as examples.  The cards you print for your kiddos have the words, but no doodles (although I did include my doodle cards for you if you have a use for them).  Your students illustrate the words by creating their own doodles.  Then, because this lesson's words are focusing on the Latin roots pend and dict have the students underline the root in each word.  You can also have the students write a sentence using the word on the back or the definition of the word if you would like.  For another activity, have them organize the word cards in alphabetical order and then write the list in their spelling journals (or on plain ol' paper if you don't use a spelling journal).

If you download this creation, please leave a comment.  If you have any ideas for improvement, feel free to leave those too. (c:  To download this file just click on the link below the sample.