Hands on learning in Science!

5th grade science has been such a joy to teach! When I think of my 5th graders, I think of the words and descriptions; energetic, passionate about stories, creative, bright, cheerful, sweet, a love of learning, artistic, love of reading and books, and artistic. 

We have been learning about cells in this past chapter. We began by introducing ourselves to DNA and made DNA ladders out of pipe cleaners. We made some mustaches too! ;) Then, we talked about how each of our DNA are different, how God created each of us differently (how cool is that?!) just like each group's DNA ladder was different. 

Later, in the chapter, we learned about the structure of animal and plant cells and looked at some under a microscope. So, a bit of a story here...The idea was for us to view two different plant cells (Elodea which is a water plant and onion) and an animal cell (from our cheek). I went to a nearby pet store to purchase some Elodea and found out that Germany does not sell it. I picked up another random water plant, hoping that it would work. I was to prepare the water plant slide and the onion slide ahead of time while the students would prepare a slide with their own cheek cells on it. For some reason, they thought this would be gross. ;) Yet, they had a blast! 

The water plant looked really cool under the microscope but as it wasn't Elodea, the plant cells looked different from what I wanted the students to see. The onion cells came out great and the cheek cells were rather hard to see. I'm not sure how good of a sample each group took. 

Viewing things under the microscope was a blast in itself and most of my students rolled with the flow. A colleague happened to be traveling to the US this past week so I found some already prepared Elodea slides for the future and had them sent to where she would be staying. She will be bringing them back this next week and we can look once more. 

To finish up our chapter on cells and learning about animal and plant cells, we are each creating an animal or plant cell out of candy! And other materials as well such as pipe cleaners, beads, cardboard, etc. Of course, the magic word is candy!! I will try to remember to add some photos of their creations after they turn them in this next week.