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.