Edible cells!

Well this past week I got to have my seventh graders do one of my favorite projects to assign.. the edible cell! For both years now the kids have gotten really into it and this year was even better than the last. It's amazing how creative kids can be, especially when it comes to food. So on Wednesday all my seventh graders came in with their "cells" made from completely edible materials.. or as they like to say, "eatable" or "editable" :) Here are some pictures of them and their creations as they went around to judge their classmates' cells for the most creative, most edible, and most like a cell. Some, although made from edible materials, were definitely NOT edible, unless you like to eat jello, nerds, mentos, chocolate, green peas, mayo, and onions together.. yeah, disgusting, but that didn't stop all the boys from digging in during lunch and spilling jello all over their nice white shirts. Ah yes, boys will be boys. See if you can guess which ones were made by the girls and which were made by the boys.. it probably won't be too hard. But overall, I was really impressed and they had a lot of fun.

This one was really well done but the boys were pretty bummed when they got to school and discovered that their manjar blanco (Peruvian version of caramel) had melted all over their cell.. hence the puddles in their cytoplasm :)

This one definitely won most edible, if you can't tell. I was happy to get a taste at lunch, just to make sure they deserved their prize, of course.

Well, I do have some other interesting news, but I need to preface it with a little explanation of the condition that my house was in about 2 weeks ago. If you remember, Amanda, Eden, and I got a kitten, Espie, during the second semester of last year. She is still practically a kitten, or looks it anyway. She's less than a year and looks tiny so we really hadn't even thought about getting her spayed yet. Well we certainly realized it was time to do that when about 2 weeks ago she went into heat and our house quickly became a zoo. I had never realized just how annoying and disruptive a cat in heat can be because I've never had an inside cat, but it was just awful. She was crying obnoxiously for about a week straight during all hours of the day, and night. Needless to say, Amanda, Eden, and I were losing quite a bit of sleep that week due to our highly hormonal cat. Well, I thought that was bad until I woke up one morning to what sounded like cats killing each other. Amanda and I ran out of our rooms, frazzled of course because it's 5am and still dark, and completely freaked out because we knew there was a strange animal in our house. Now, you need to realize that we live in Lima so our house has a ridiculous about of security.. multiple doors with locks, dead bolts, and an electric fence. Well, this didn't stop our little male cat friend from getting onto the roof and climbing in through one of our bathroom windows. Eden came down after hearing all the commotion to tell us that she had been chasing this strange grey cat around our house for half of the night. Ugh. Needless to say, our dog was about ready to tear out every plant in the garden because she was so traumatized.

So, after a visit from this male intruder I think at least twice that week, we were pretty sure what used to be our innocent little kitten, had now become a promiscuous, soon-to-be mommy. And sure enough, about 2 weeks later, she's showing the pudgy signs of kittens. After researching cat pregnancy, I was surprised to discover that the gestation period is only 65 days, ah! So we need to find a home for some adorable little kittens in the next 2 months. It will definitely be fun to have some adorable kittens in the house for a little while. Life is never dull here though, that's for sure.