Anatomy IV

Next Up Sk-ELLIE-ton got a brain thanks to Ellen McHenery's Basement Workshop.

Here is Nate modeling our brain hat!

The older girls each took a hemisphere to color.  Then Nate and I did the cutting and taping.

Kristy

Anatomy III

After our study of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, we were moving on to the digestive system.  It also worked out that Kate was studying how to make casings in Home Ec.  How often to Home Ec. and anatomy converge, unless your getting stitches in the ER?

I bought a yard of pink fabric that we cut into two inch strips.  I sewed about half of them together in to a very long strand (a yard was too much).  Then Kate got to work sewing them as a casing.  We kept all the seams on the outside, with the home of a smooth interior.  We cut a very thin elastic to half the length of our casing intestines.  This gave our intestines that bunched appearance.

From the top down, we placed our esophagus (a pipe cut to length) and glued it in place.  I whip stitched a stomach out of felt, which slid over the end of the esophagus.  In the back of the felt, I cut a couple of slits and Nate zip tied it to the cardboard sk-ELLIE-ton.  I hand stitched the intestines to the base of the stomach opening.  Then we made three slits for zip ties one each side of the cardboard.  Kate and I worked the intestines back and forth and caught them up with the zip ties.  The plan had been to pull them loosely so we could drop a marble through the esophagus, and work it through the system, but one of the children was a bit over zealous and pulled too hard on the zip tie!

Supplies:
1/2 yard of pink cotton fabric (cut into 2' wide ribbons)
elastic
pink felt
1" pipe
thread
sewing machine
needle
Sk-ELLIE-ton

Kristy

Anatomy, continued

So, when we last left our Sk-ELLIE-ton, she was just a bag of bones.

After that, we studied muscles

And gave her a working hand, via Be the One

Then she got a lung transplant thanks to Spell Outloud.  After several uses, we switched to a cut up ziplock bag and taped the bag on for more stability--instead of a grocery sack held by a rubber band.

We also created her a heart based on Mommy-Labs.

To that we added arteries and veins that led to and from the heart down one arm, and also to the lung.  Those attachments were made with knots and rubber cement.

Here she is on transplant surgery day.  Everyone was gloved and ready--from left to right: yarn (veins and arteries), scissors, rubber cement, and enthusiasm!  Her heart is enlarged to show texture (or just because our balloons are a bit big).  I did not pop the balloon because I wanted the extra stability while we were working on other organs.

I was so glad to find those links through Pinterest.  I can't say anything further about the sites, as I didn't spend much time there though.

Next time, I'll share some of the things I created for us myself to stick with our sk-ELLIE-ton learning tool.

Kristy

Habitats

We're studying biology this year. I've been planning our course since midway through last year. All the sudden it hit me though--the outline I had read (and loved), from The Well Trained Mind, left out a few topics I wanted to cover. Some of it can be easily worked in, other things not so much. Kate isn't as gaa gaa over animals as some children are, so it isn't difficult to shorten that study (which is supposed to last 20 weeks) by a couple of weeks to add in some other biology topics. We are starting with a unit study on habitats. I plan to teach various habitats now and then she will relate that to those animals later when we get to them.

Our unit study is in depth and costly...just kidding. I have several books I picked up at the library (The Usborne Book of Wild Places, EyeWitness Science: Ecology, The World Wildlife Fund: Living Planet, and Animal Habitats [by Judy Press]). Just about any book on habitats for children would probably work. The World Wildlife one isn't for kids, but is mostly pictures.


We read about a habitat, looked at pictures, and I tortured the child by making her draw her answer.


She loves to draw, plus I get to see that she gets it. She was facinated by the carnivorous plants...here is a pitcher plant eating a bug on the right (on the left is a parrot). And in case you didn't know this about rainforests, she tells us, "They are really wet."


I have her draw a picture of the habitat, write one sentence to describe it, and then draw a picture of one animal and one plant that she could find there. She describes wetlands with the sentence, "They have lots of water," and she illustrates a snake and cattails.


I even had her draw a picture of her habitat (our house). Excuse the blocked out portions, but I didn't really want the whole internet to have our home address! There are steps, a flower bed and a lot of windows above the door.


I then bound her pages together to make a book of habitats to have on hand that she can look at as she goes through the animals later.

The Animal Habitats book is the book I've leaned on most heavily. I have really enjoyed the art activities. We haven't done anywhere near all of them (not by my daughter's choice!), but they have been fun and fit right in with the lesson. I would recommend seeking it out if you can.