Our Journey Learning About The Human Body

From the moment of conception when the cells divide, all through birth and beyond we will learn about our bodies. What they are made of, what are those squishy organs for, why we need a skeleton and all the things in between we will study this year.

I can't hold claim to all this because the idea came from Guest Hollow I used alot of her book recs and scheduling ideas. I have changed some stuff up a bit added different projects and such. She has such great things on her blog! So have fun looking at the scedule and the resources. I will hopefully be posting weekly on our activities with pictures and adding or changing anything.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Week 5 BONES!!

Perfect topic so close to Halloween. This was the beginning of a two weeks of bones. There is so much to learn. Learn we did. Seeme like we had an experiment or an activity every day. We also started using The Magic School Bus Human Body Kit this week and the kids had alot of fun with that especially Skyler. Granted the Magic School Bus is aimed at younger kids but the boys are still good with the chapter books and the kits are pretty cool so far with the experiments. Of course they used Brainpop and I still am saying that Brainpop is just wonderful. My kids all love the little movies and games they even ask to "play" brainpop when school is over.

We managed to get a pig bone from a butcher so they could really see the marrow. They were really amazed to feel that rock hard bone had such a soft middle! Of course they were sad to know that it came from a pig. My kids are just sweet that way. We tried to make a microscope slide but I am not too good at that yet so we did look up images on google and they were OK with that.

We also learned all about joints and synovial fluid. This is a ball and socket model from the Magic School Bus Kit. The kids all said it looked like one of theose old video game controllers, I think they meant atari lol. We also threw in a bit of nature with an owl pellet. I bought them online guaranteed to have a complete skeleton. You can see that here. They also noticed the "ball" at the end of the pig bone so that was a good hands on expierence foe them to have. We made sure to use and wiggle all our joints as well as we talked about them! They looked so silly. I will say they are enjoying science this year and seem way more into it than they have in the past. I have also started having Skyler do her writing here where I usually fill in lapbook pieces and labelings after she and I discuss it. She is 7 and getting older so it's time.

Here they are all working together on the lapbook pieces that go along with the book The Magic School Bus Missing Bones. They have gotten a kick outta hearing "beware old ghost John long white bones and the rest all gone"!! All in all it was a fun full week for science and I had fun too so that was even better!! I took a ton of pictures as usual and couldn't post them all but you can see them here.


Friday, October 14, 2011

Week 4 for science CELLS!!!

The kids seemed to get into this one way more than microscopes or the Hands of a Child Lapbooks on conception and birth. We did experiments though so that could be it. I also learned that as far as they are concerned they could care less how a microscope works or why or the names of the parts they just want it to work! We studied the basic building blocks for life this week CELLS! Brainpop was awesome as usual for this subject except for the younger version for Skyler, but she still enjoyed watching the older kids movies. They all seem to like brainpop I just cannot say enough about it!

We found out that while cells are microscopic there is actually a cell you can see, an egg! We also learned that the yellow stuff (yolk) is not the baby chicken but what the baby chicked uses to nuture itself. My kids were pretty happy about that one! We also learned about the cells regulating our temperature as well as cold blooded vs. warm blooded! For our grand finale of the Cell Week we made a cell cake that I will say turned out pretty darned good. Even better when you realize I am so not the cook!



All in all for science it was a great week! For science anyway LOL. If you would like to see more pictures you can here.