BrainPOP, Cells, a Foldable and a Plea...

We are beginning our study of life science this week.  Segueing from physical science, I introduced the concept of cells being the building blocks of life, similar to atoms being the basic chemical make up of everything.  We talked about how cells are basically little bodies in and of themselves and how they need the same 4 things that all multicellular organisms need:  food, water, gas exchange, and waste disposal.

From there, things got *really* dry and boring....so I thought a little BrainPOP could remedy the situation.  We began with a movie on cells themselves.  This mentioned that there were two basic types of cells (animal and plant) and that they did some different, but basically the same, things.  The second video was on cell specialization.  That laid out the differences a bit more.

I then gave the kids a piece of white paper, which we folded in half, cut a little space off the top, and slits in the open side to form 8 doors.  On each of the doors, the students drew one of the different types of cells we looked at.  On the inside, they identified the cell and wrote a teeny bit about its function.  And that is it! I just wanted them to get a little bit of reference for the idea that cells don't all look the same or have the same function, but ARE alive and ARE similar when it comes to basic needs.

I plan to keep these and pull them out when we study the body systems, as all the cells are the same as those systems we will be studying.  It should become a handy reference for the kids during this unit....or at least that is the hope.

Do you have some really fun activity you do for a life science unit about the way living organisms function?  I would love to hear about it.  I am coming up empty right about now (my brain is on overload!) The only thing I do have is a "create an animal cell/plant cell" project...but I want something else!  Anyone have anything???