Make a Candy Cell!

Whether you have decided to homeschool because of COVID or have been doing it for years, we parents know not every topic is easy to teach. When studying biology, learning about cells can seem daunting with all the technical terms. Making a cell out of candy is an easy, fun project to liven up your school (and your kids, once they eat it!).

First, use a drawing from a biology book or the Internet to introduce and examine the parts of a human cell. You need not spend much time on it; just spend time with your kids enjoying looking at the diagram.  The book we're using this year is The Human Body: An Illustrated Guide to Its Structure, Function, and Disorders edited by Charles Clayman, MD. I picked it up at a book sale for three dollars.

Think of candies or foods that resemble the cell's parts. I bought the components at Dollar General for less than ten dollars. Here is what we used:

jello (cytoplasm)

whole mandarin orange (nucleus)

pretzel sticks (centrioles)

Circus Peanuts candy (mitochondria)

Twizzlers (endoplasmic reticulum)

Nerds (ribosomes)

gummy worms (Golgi complex)

caramel cream (vacuole--you only need one)

Bottle Caps candies (lysosomes)

And the perimeter of the container of your cell will serve as the cell membrane.

You will also need ten small square pieces of paper, and toothpicks.

Make your jello the morning when you're going to make the cell. Do it at least four hours in advance, so the jello has time to set. I put it in the fridge around 7:30, and by 11:30 it was set enough to use. I realize cytoplasm isn't orange, but that's a lot tastier than plain gelatin!

Before making the cell, I divided up the cell part names, which we wrote on each piece of paper. On the back, we wrote a short summary of the organelle's function. Take these papers and tape each one to a toothpick. You will use these as labels for the cell parts.

I also took each candy bag and labeled each one in advance with masking tape ("mitochondria" on the bag of Circus Peanuts, etc.). This helped us stay organized, because where candy is involved, excited chaos tends to ensue! When we were finally ready, we organized the cell parts on the counter: 

Now you're ready to take out your set jello and assemble your cell! What fun! 

We invited our neighbor friend over, as she's about to start virtual school. The three girls had such fun organizing and piecing together the cell. I think this will be a "sweet" school memory for all of us, and I guarantee we all learned and now care about the parts of human cells. 

I hope you can use this as a "treat" for your homeschool, too!

In memory of our sweet baby,

Nibbles Squeaks Wilde

Nov. 14, 2013-July 29, 2020

We miss and love you!