Human Body: The Brain and Nervous System

The Princess and I watched this cute little video about the brain: 

Check out the Brain Zone website for some cool a facts, games, and a "tour" of a brain. 

 

The Princess and I used clay to create the different regions of the brain:

We also made a cool "brain hat." Click on the picture to make your own.

Here's a cool School House Rock video on the Nervous System:

                 

Eric Carle Style Giraffe Art

The Princess used different items to paint with. She used a small ball and yellow paint first and a scrubbing sponge with black paint. 

We cut a piece of poster board into the shape of a giraffe. 

Once the paper dried, we glued the painted paper onto the poster paper.

 Then we trimmed it up a little bit. 

 Finally we added the black painted paper for the eye and the tail. 

Human Body: Circulatory System

One of the first activities we did with this lesson was to check out pulse. We checked it in our wrists and in our necks. Its a little easier to find it in your neck. We read that if when we're resting our heart rate is lower and when we exercise our heart rate increases. So Parkie checked her pulse while we were sitting for 30 seconds. She exercised for a while and I timed her when she checked her pulse again. 

  

We checked out this awesome little video about the heart. 

We make an awesome example of our blood. The idea came from here. First I put water and a drop of yellow food coloring into a small plastic bottle. I explain to my daughter that this was like our blood plasma. 

 

Then I put Cheerios in a sandwich bag with a lot of red food coloring. My squeezed the closed bag for a while to make sure that the food color got onto all of the Cheerios. She recognized that these were the red blood cells that we had read about. 

My daughter added the red blood cells to the plasma. We didn't have any plastic gloves so it got a little messy. 

Then I got smart and we cut a whole in the corner of the bag and dumped the red blood cells in that way. 

The last step was to add little marshmallows to represent the white blood cells. Here's our final product:

Click on the worksheet to print your own.

Human Body: Respiratory System

We watched this clip to understand the respiratory system.

 

Check out this diagram: 

Make your own balloon "lung." This guy shows how to do it:

We checked out this awesome website and  did their experiment on vocal cords. 

Your child can use a book to label the different parts of the respiratory system.

This book has some great ideas for projects too!

 

My daughter created her own presentation about the lungs and drew her own picture to go with it.

This is a great way to see what she learned without a formal assessment.

Check out our other lessons in this unit: Human Body: The Digestive System and Human Body: The Skeletal System. 

Human Body: Skeletal System

We built our own skeletal system. You can print one out from  this website. Then we labeled the bones. We named it "Bony. "

Here's a printable to show the names of the main bones. We used this to help us label Bony.

Click here to print a fill-in-the-blank version. 

We also checked out this song about the skeletal system. So cute!!!

For Art, I traced my daughter's body on butcher paper. At first she was going to use random items to create the bones for this skeleton, but we weren't satisfied with the results. So we decided to change plans mid project (which is why the skull is made from paper and the fingers are done with q-tips). We mixed equal parts of regular white glue and shaving cream. It created a cool white puffy paint. She used a paintbrush to create the rest of the skeleton. 

Here's a silly song when you need a brain break!

My daughter worked on this sheet to show off what she learned about bones. Click on the image to print your own.

Check out this site to create your own model of a backbone! 

Check out Human Body: The Respiratory System.

Human Body: Digestive System

Day One: 
We watched this video together about the Digestive System to start of the unit.
Then we read a book about the digestive system like this one:

We completed this worksheet and discussed each part of the digestive system and its function.

Day Two:This was a lot of fun! I traced my daughter's body on butcher paper. Then she measured out the different lengths of each part of the digestive system and glued them onto the body.

 

Day Three:

We started off by reading another awesome book about the digestive system. Then we completed the worksheet below. Click on the image to print your own.

We examined the stomach by putting water (stomach acid) into sandwich bag (stomach) along with a piece of bread (food). We squeezed the bag to simulate the stomach muscles working to digest the food.

You can also use a clear soda instead of water. It would yield a better result. Cola would be good too, however, it would be harder to see the food in the dark liquid. 

Day Four:
We explored the small intestines today. We used pantyhose to demonstrate out food moves through the small intestine and the nutrients seep out into the blood stream.

 Here's a picture from another site. Click on it to see the other activities that they did.

Day Five:
For the end of unit assessment, my daughter had to give an oral report. She named all the major parts of the digestive system and explained their function. She did a great job and we enjoyed this unit. 

Check out Human Body: Skeletal System and Human Body: Respiratory System.