Cells Cells They Re Made Of Organelles Lyrics

Teaching Cell Biology With the Organelles Song

The "Cells, Cells They're Made Of Organelles" lyrics represent one of those educational songs that circulates through middle school science classrooms, YouTube channels, and TeacherPayTeachers bundles. It cycles through the major parts of a eukaryotic cell — nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, lysosomes, cell membrane, and so on — set to a repetitive melody designed for memorization. I've used it myself in tutoring sessions and when helping a cousin's kid with homework, and it does what it promises: it gets students to recite organelle names without immediately falling asleep. That's useful for a first pass. Here's the straightforward version of the lyrics most people are looking for:

Cells Cells They Re Made Of Organelles Lyrics

Cells, cells, they're made of organelles
Cells, cells, they're made of organelles
Cells, cells, they're made of organelles
That's right, cells are made of organelles Nucleus, nucleus, controls the cell
Mitochondria, makes the energy
Ribosomes, make the proteins
Golgi body, packages things up
Endoplasmic reticulum, transports materials
Lysosomes, cleans up the waste
Cell membrane, keeps things in and out
That's right, cells are made of organelles This is the version most commonly found across educational platforms. Some variants swap in chloroplasts for plant cells or rephrase the mitochodria line slightly. The core structure stays the same.

Now, the practical stuff. Using this song as a teaching tool works if your goal is recall. My go-to workflow is to play it once for exposure, have students fill in a blank diagram on the second playthrough, and then do a quick whiteboard draw-along where they label the organelles from memory while humming the tune. This cuts down the time it takes to get through initial organelle vocabulary to roughly 15 minutes for a class of 25-30 students, compared to 40 minutes of lecture with slide decks. But here's what nobody on a worksheet or a marketing page will tell you: the song creates a recall problem at a specific point. Students can list organelles in order after hearing the song, but when asked what a lysosome actually does versus what the Golgi apparatus does, a significant number confuse them. The song's rhythm buries functional detail under name-dropping. I hit this exact issue with a group of 8th graders during a review session — they could sing the whole thing back perfectly, then couldn't distinguish between rough ER and smooth ER on a diagram. My workaround was to add a second layer: after the song, I had them pair each organelle with a single verb. Lysosome equals "destroys." Golgi equals "packages." Rough ER equals "folds." Smooth ER equals "makes lipids." Two minutes, fixes the main gap in retention. There's also a structural limitation worth noting. This song treats cells as if they're all the same. It describes a generic animal cell with no mention of the cell wall, large central vacuole, or chloroplasts that differentiate plant cells. If you run this song without adding a follow-up conversation about plant vs. animal cell differences, students will walk away thinking every cell has a lysosome and every cell lacks a cell wall. I learned that one the hard way when a student confidently told me plants don't have cell membranes because the song never mentioned one. That's on me for not addressing the gap after the song, not on the song itself, but it's a real pitfall.

If you need actual recordings or high-quality lyric pages, search "Cells Cells They're Made Of Organelles song" and you'll find versions on YouTube channels like Subjected To Music, The Singing Scientist, and various independent educator uploads. The lyrics are widely posted on lyric and educational resource sites like Songlyrics, BrainPOP-adjacent teacher repositories, and Pinterest boards that aggregate science songs. You don't need to pay for anything. Most of these resources are free, though some hosts bundle the song into larger paid curricula you probably don't need. The song works as an entry point. It does not work as a complete lesson. Pair it with a diagram activity, address the plant-vs-animal gap explicitly, and add functional verbs to each organelle. That combination gets you past the surface-level memorization that the song alone leaves students sitting at. Anything beyond that requires moving into structure-function relationships, and that's where the real biology learning happens anyway.