Spudoodles!

To continue our genetics study this week, the students made “spudoodles,” potato people that demonstrated the principles of inheritance.

 

Each student started with two envelopes, each containing scraps of colored paper representing the genes of one parent for various traits. They copied down the genetic information for each parent onto their worksheets. Then they filled out Punnett squares for each trait to figure out the possible genetic makeup of the offspring.

 

Next, they picked one gene for each trait from each parent to determine the baby spudoodle’s genotype and phenotype and figured out the percentage chance of that particular genetic make-up.

Then came the fun part—building the spudoodles. Each potato baby had different traits—ears or no ears; hair or no hair; small, medium, or large mouth, and so on.  You can find the complete instructions and worksheets for the Spudoodle project here.