Animal Cell Model

A few years ago, we studied anatomy for our homeschool science, and we made a wonderfully complicated edible cell model.  We are reviewing biology this year with the kids, and we reviewed all about animal cells.  To help get it into their heads, we made an animal cell cookie model.

(This post contains affiliate links)

Animal cell cookie model supplies

Sugar cookie (this is the same recipe I used for the cookie model of an atom), chocolate chips, Hershey’s Kiss**, CKE Biology

**this would have been even better if I’d had M&Ms, much sadness (entire talk about it further down)

 

How to make an animal cell cookie model

1.  Before you put the cookies on the sheet to bake, mix in some chocolate chips.

2.  Once you’ve put the cookies on the sheet, flatten them out a bit, and add a Hershey’s kiss roughly in the middle.

3.  Bake the cookies and wait rather impatiently for them to get out and then cool enough to be able to touch.

Some other great lessons on biology

• Food web lesson
• Animal Report minibook for early learners
• Quick nature walk tips
• Zoology for Kids
• following procedures

 Learning from the animal cell cookie

Once you’ve put it all together, you can ask questions about the different roles of the parts.  We talked about how the edge of the cookie represents the cell membrane (if it was a plant cell, I’d use sugar cookies, frost it, and put licorice laces around the edge to represent the cell wall).  The cell membrane is much less defined than the cell wall of a plant cell.  The chocolate chips represent the different organelles.  After the fact, I realized M&Ms would work so much better because they could represent the many different types and jobs of the organelles.  The Hershey’s Kiss represents the nucleus, yummy that it is.  Finally, the cookie itself represents the cytoplasm (isn’t cytoplasm a fun word?  It reminds me of Ectoplasm from Ghostbusters. Did you hear Hi-C is bringing back Ecto Cooler?).

It was fun, simple, and they remembered it fairly well.

More cell models to try

Making a cell model is a fairly popular science activity, so there’s lots of other examples to try.

• jello cell model
• Pizza cell model
• felt cell model
• LEGO animal cell

Originally published December 11, 2015