After studying the various parts of the cell the last 3 weeks, it was time to build our own! Halloween candy came in handy as the students each picked out what they thought would best represent the various organelles of a cell. Because we were so few in number today, we split into two groups--one made an animal cell, and one made a plant cell. They recorded each organelle and what they used to represent it as they built their cell in Jello (cytoplasm). Some of their homework sheets came in handy as they decided what organelles to put into their cell. Then, I briefly introduced how cells reproduce. We watched a short video and then figured out what stages of mitosis we had before they got to eat the reproducing "cells".
Videos: The Amoeba Sisters: Mitosis Cell Division and the Cell Cycle--great animation about cells, also covers sperm and egg fertilization. Activities: Mitosis Wheel--create this visual about the stages of mitosis and meiosis. Make a cell Model--If your student hasn't had enough (or for all the kids who missed today), make a cell model. There are so many ideas of what to make these from--cake, cookies, pizza, clay, paper plates--you can use anything! And you can use the same forms to make a model of the various stages of mitosis. Use yarn and clay on paper plates, or frosting on Oreos. Get creative. Create a Mitosis Video--Let them use whatever supplies they want to create a stop-motion video of mitosis in action.
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These last two weeks, we have continued to learn about the amazing microscopic world of cells.
After getting a grasp of the membrane that protects the cell, this week, we moved on to the other organelles that make up animal and plant cells. I started off assigning each student an organelle as they came into class and this was what they became an expert on throughout the class. They found their organelle on a cell diagram, read about its function, and then added it to our diagrams.
![]() They did a great job coming up with comparisons and presenting their organelle and its function to the group so we could all learn about how cells function. They each created a flipbook of the parts of a cell as we went through the presentations, and they went home with a couple different worksheets to also help them remember the organelles they learned about today. Videos: Amoeba Sisters: Introduction to Cells (This is the one we watched in class). Aumsum: Animal Cell Travel Deep Inside a Leaf (This is a great animation, and includes annotations to how they created the animation, which I know might be interesting to some of the movie-making kids in this class.) Cell City Activities: Plant and Animal Cell Printable Diagrams This is a link to the pages that I sent home as homework. There are other activities you can print out as well (or if you misplaced the ones sent home.) These will help the students become more familiar with the different organelles so they will be ready to build our edible cells at our next class. Cell City Worksheet See if your student remembers which organelles these city structures represent. Parts of the Cell Interactive flashcards where the students can test their memory. They're made of organelles. (If you want to see the rap we watched to introduce our new topic, you can check it out here.) Today, we started our unit on cells, the smallest unit of life. We talked a little about why the atoms and molecules we've been studying, while IN all living things, are not actually alive themselves, but cells, which can grow and reproduce and use energy are alive. We will go into depth about the different organelles found in the cell, but for today, we were mostly talking about the cell membrane, cell wall, and nucleus. The first activity we did was to make a slide of an onion skin and look at the onion cells under a microscope. They were all able to identify the cell wall and the nucleus in their onion cells. Then, the set up the Naked Egg experiment. I pre-soaked the eggs in vinegar which causes an acid-base reaction with the shell and leaves them with just the semi-permeable membrane holding the insides of the egg together. (You can try this at home--it just takes 2 days, changing the vinegar once in the middle--most of the kids seemed pretty fascinated by this phenomenon.) ![]() With the egg in this state, it makes a good representation of a cell. It has a membrane that will allow water and air to move through it, the clear part of the egg is like the cytoplasm in a cell, and the yolk is like the nucleus. We only very briefly talked about this in class, so you may want to go over the parts that are represented in the egg again. Next, the eggs were each placed in a cup and covered with either water, vinegar, or corn syrup. Each student made a hypothesis about how they thought the eggs might change depending on which liquid they are soaking in and they took them home to observe 24 hours later. We'll have a discussion in class next week about osmosis and how the egg/cell maintains homeostasis. Books: Life of a Cell, Andres Llamas Ruiz (available at the Livermore library) Videos: Cell Rap (we watched this in class) The Sci Guys: The Naked Egg and Osmosis--watch this after they have made their observations on the eggs they brought home. There are more activities to do with naked eggs if you'd like to try this again. We'll be talking about this next week when we discuss the cell membrane in more detail. Amoeba Sisters: Osmosis Amoeba Sisters: Inside the Cell Membrane Activities: Naked Egg experimenting--you can try out removing the shell of an egg, and then watch the Sci Guys video above for ideas on how to take the experiment we did another step farther. |
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May 2020
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