Human Body Unit

We've been learning about the human body for the last few weeks. Our home school group put on an awesome human body day one Saturday. Each of the kids did a report on part of the body and shared it with the group. My kids participated. Adelia did her report on eyes. Lincoln did his on bones. And Ivan chose to do kidneys.

"Eyes can move. They can see. They can help us do lots of things. Some people need glasses because they can't see the right shape. I love my eyes." -Adelia

"Kidneys clean your blood. They are organs. They are in the back of your body. They are a little bit round and look like a crescent shaped oval. Kidneys are red." -Ivan

"The skeleton has 206 bones. Your bones protect your organs. For example, your ribs protect your lungs, your skull protects your brain, and your sternum protects your heart. Your backbone is made up of 34 bones that fit together at 33 separate joints. That is why you can twist and turn in almost any way. Joints help you move. If you had no joints, you would be as stiff as a rock. The large shin bone in front of your leg is called Tibia, and the other bone is called Fibula. It is important to keep your bones healthy and strong. One way we can do that is by eating cheese, and milk, and yogurt, and tuna fish, and spinach. Calcium helps build and repair my skeleton and teeth. I am glad we have bones."
-Lincoln

After the reports, the kids got to make life-sized models of their bodies. They traced themselves onto large pieces of poster paper. Then they colored the different bones and organs and cut them out and glued them onto their bodies. This project comes from the book My Body by Patty Carratello. It's a big project to do in one day. We ended up taking a lot of ours home to work on in smaller chunks throughout the week. But I love this project, and so do my kids. Here is Lincoln's finished product:

To go along with our home school showcase day, the kids and I have been working our way through the Young Scientists Magic School Bus Human Body science kit. It's been really awesome too.

First we made a model of the lung. We did this by cutting a 2 liter pop bottle in half, stretching a balloon over the pouring end, and pushing the balloon inside the bottle. We stretched plastic wrap over the other end and taped it down so it was air-tight. Then we made a handle out of a small rectangle of card stock and taped it onto the plastic wrap. Pushing and pulling gently on the handle makes the balloon expand and contract, and shows the relationship between the diaphragm and the lung. Which I thought was really cool. Also, the yellow balloon in the picture was a little on the small side. We took it out and replaced it with a larger white one, and that was better.

 Another really cool experiment was using balloons and a straw to pump blood like the heart does. To do this you need a bendy straw, two balloons, and water with red food coloring. Fill one of the balloons with red water (about 1/2 full) and use a small elastic band to secure it to the end of the straw. You want it to be as airtight as possible. Then take the empty balloon and use a small elastic to secure it to the other end of the straw, again air tight is the goal. If you want you can tape a little human figure to the bendy part in the straw, so it's easier to visualize the blood pumping through the heart. Then gently squeeze the balloon with the water in it, squeeze and release at a steady pace (like a beating heart). When the first balloon empties, squeeze the second balloon to get the water back through the body and to the first balloon.

We also learned about how muscles expand and contract to allow the bones to move. Our kit came with a card board cutout of a leg that we put together with a brass fastener. Then we taped string on each side, that would hand loose, or go tight as we bent the leg back and forth.

Another project the kit had us make was a ball and socket joint using a hollow half of a rubber ball, a ping-pong ball, and a rolled up news paper.

 We talked about the tongue muscle too, and did an experiment to see which taste buds detected which kinds of tastes (sour, sweet, salty, bitter), but it was very involved on my part, and I had no chance of taking any pictures. The kids had fun with it though.

Of course we watched a few Magic School Bus episodes. The Magic School Bus Flexes It's Muscles, and The Magic School Bus Inside Ralphie, and The Magic School Bus Works Out.













And we read lots and lots of books. Here are some of my favorites:

Good Enough to Eat by Lizzy Rockwell was a really cool book. It talked about the different kinds of foods you eat, and which foods have certain kinds of vitamins, nutrients, and minerals, and what those things do for the different parts of your body.