Making Marshmallow Babies

  • Lesson: Inheritance and Traits
  • Starter: Inventory of Traits
  • Class Practical: Making Reebops Babies
  • Breeding Reebops Babies Class Practical Photos
  • Inventory of Traits Activity Photos

Last week, the 6th graders explore how each organism has a distinguishing characteristic called a trait and how many traits are passed from one generation to the next during reproduction.

We started this lesson off by watching a Brainpop video on heredity. This video has an easy-to-follow description on why you’re taller than your parents, or why you have blue eyes when your parents have brown eyes.

From there, the students took an inventory of their own easily- observable genetic traits. Working in small groups, they observe how their trait inventories differ from those of others. Students record their observations in a data table and compared the most and least common traits within their group.

In the Science lab, the students were given instructions to breed a male and a female Reebop in order to make a baby Reebop, and find out what it might be like. Students work in pairs with guided student procedure sheets, envelopes of chromosomes, a decoder key and the materials to build their baby Reebops.

I prepared extra marshmallows as a reward when students successfully bred (a.k.a. completed) their baby Reebops. This was also one way to prevent them from eating off the marshmallows used in their practical work.

References:

  1. Inventory of my traits
  2. Brainpop: Heredity
  3. Inventory Checklist Reference
  4. Making Reebops Resource Page