Thursday, March 4, 2010

Atomic Oatmeal Cookies - Edible Atoms


For a bedtime story tonight, I read the children Robert E. Wells' What's Smaller Than A Pygmy Shrew?. It's a sweetly illustrated science book, looking like any other picture book, which was enough to keep my 3 year old following along, but the story itself is a challenging science lesson, that engaged the older children.

Wells' story moves from the tiny pygmy shrew, to a lady bug, to a couple of protozoa, to bacteria, to a molecule, to an atom, to the nucleus with neutrons, and protons, and finally to quarks, and electrons. Then it all zooms back out again, and ends where it begins, with the pygmy shrew.

I made up a batch of atomic oatmeal cookies, to go along with the story as an object lesson/snack.


What made them atomic? Raisin protons, golden raisin neutrons, and chocolate chip electrons, of course.


Here's Hydrogen:


Helium:


Lithium:

and Beryllium:


I stopped at beryllium, because the nucleus was starting to get crowded.

They're not perfect models, but you get the idea, and what's even better - so did the children.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

6 comments:

Ticia said...

Nice. Though I personally would have done it with no raisins..... Raisins yuck.

Unknown said...

My kiddos would only have eaten the chocolate chips- err, I mean "electrons"...

(Genius idea, as usual!)

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

That's funny - my children agree with you. They pulled all the raisins off, before they ate the cookies :)

Just Jenn said...

I need to have my husband follow your blog and take over my homeschooling! lol! He loves science & oatmeal cookies! ;) clever fun project! nice job!
Just Jenn~

Brimful Curiosities said...

Using cookies for teaching science. Great Fun! Love the idea.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I seriously think reading your blog that you bake every day and whip up fantastic things too. Nice way to "digest" atoms