We were super excited to start Anatomy this year. I have so many fun experiments planned. But, of course, we had to start with the Jello Cell. Did you create one of these in school? I remember doing it at least twice!
You can use all kinds of things to create your cell. This just happened to be what I chose: jello (Cytoplasm – I would advise using a light color if you want to see the details), Whoppers (nucleus), M&M’s (Lysosomes – I think Lemon Heads or jelly beans would have worked better here. The M&M’s bled their color into the jello and made it a bit murky), Fruit by the foot (we used two different kinds for the Mitochondria and the Golgi Complex), Fruit twists (Endoplasmic Reticulum – I was looking for licorice, but this is what I found).
We read a bit about what it means to be human and then about how cells work in the body. I found a book with a nice color picture of a cell that we could refer to as we built our jello cell.
I was surprised how much of the fruit and candy actually ended up in Leif’s bowl and not in his mouth…
“Mom, my nuculus won’t stop floating!”
Just as fun to eat as it was to make! (though, not as pretty!)
What fun projects! As I gear up to start homeschooling my almost 5 year old, I’m certain I’ll be returning again and again to get ideas from you. I often come back to get the recipe for the tomato/basil/garlic soup from several years back. So sorry to hear about Suki and the chickens. Farming can be hard. We recently had a neighbors dog attack our sweet lil piggies. It gets my blood boiling just thinking about it…. All that energy, time and money you pour into these animals and then to have them mauled and taken away in a careless act of nature…. sigh. It can be so unfair. But I would rather be exposed to the raw and gnarly tides of nature than to live in ignorance and buy convenience food from the store. Its the trade off! Anyway, thank you for the inspiring schooling posts!
Love this post. I am a homeschooling mom of 7.
Blessings, Debra
Healthy Eating Family Style
Cool idea! We’re starting a homeschool unit on the human body next month, I like the hands-on-ness of this project.
Wow, everyone is growing up so fast! Enjoy every minute. We did these same sort of Anatomy experiments when mine were young, last year they took an Advanced Anatomy class for High School, and they groaned at me saying, “Mom, there is more to the ear then the canal, cochlea, stirup looking bone, I miss those easy lessons.” I smiled, not just from the memories, but that they remembered it all.
I love this! They did an awesome job. 🙂 Passing this on!