Human Anatomy - The Nervous System

The next stop on our journey through the human body is the nervous system.  Once again we took out several books on the subject from the library.  

L added the nerves and spinal column to her body by using green embroidery thread dipped in glue.  She braided some of the thread to make the spinal column.  Once that was finished she glued on a brain inside the skull and labelled it.

We talked about how the brain is the main control centre of the body and how it sends and receives messages through the nerves and spinal column.

Next L made this super cool brain hat which can be found here.  I want to say a huge THANK YOU to all of those hardworking people who share their work for free with all of us.  You are so kind to share your learning tools with everyone!  L loved this activity.

We talked about all of our senses and what parts of the brain controls them.  We also did some brain games on the computer and looked at optical illusions. 

 One of our favourites was to look at a picture of many objects and try to memorize them for 1 minute.  We then waited for a minute and tried to recall them.  We both remembered over half which is supposed to be pretty good.

I finally got around to making some play dough for our next brain activity.  We looked up a brain model on the internet and L made it out of play dough and labelled the parts.  When she saw the picture I took she asked if she could edit it with an online editor we use.  This is her finished product. Much more spectacular!

To finish up the nervous system I wrote out cards for each part of the brain and what it controls.  I then wrote out different actions or things we do such as "taste a lemon", "watch a movie" "walk on a balance beam" and L had to place them under the correct part of the brain.

Next we are going to move away from systems for a bit and delve into the internal organs....

Graphing and Charting

What's the easiest way to poll a lot of people quickly?  Facebook of course!

Last week I asked on my FB page what all of my friends and family's favourite ice cream flavours are on behalf of L.  Once the results were in I showed L how to make a tally chart.  After doing this she was able to determine which flavours were the favourites, how many people responded and how many flavours were chosen.

We went shopping for some school supplies yesterday and L was excited to get started in her new graph paper booklet.  I showed her how to make a bar graph and here are the results.

I also wanted to show L one more way to see the results of a poll or survey so I decided to show her how to do a pie chart.  Haha I quickly realized this involves some math!  Yes I had to call in reinforcements in the form of hubby to help to get the correct percentages and make up the pie chart.  L coloured each of the sections and made the colour key.  I really wanted her to do this because it is such a great visual of the results.

Stay tuned for more charts and graphs this summer!

Banyan Tree Oil Pastels

This is such a stunning yet simple art project.  I followed the directions from this site

First off L and I looked at different pictures of Banyan trees on the internet and talked about where you would find one and why they look how they do.

We then drew an outline of a tree onto our paper and painted it in with black acrylic paint.  L added her branches as she was painting.

Once the paint had dried we started colouring in each of the spaces with two colours trying to blend them together in the middle.  We both decided to have our trees in the water and therefore colour reflections.

This is L's completed work.  I love how she added the sun.  Now that she knows what the project is all about she said next time she will fill more of her page with branches.  I'm proud of her for sticking with all of the colouring as she had a lot of white space to fill.

This is my tree.  I really enjoyed doing this project along side L.

We have decided we are going to try this project again and make a whole forest of these magnificent trees!

Human Anatomy-The Skeletal System

Our main project this summer is the human body.  

The first system is the skeletal system.

I traced around L onto a large piece of cardboard and then we cut it out.  We are gradually going to add every system onto L's body cutout.  I printed out a child sized skeleton and we cut it out and then L assembled it and glued it onto the cardboard.

Next was labelling all of the bones.  L used a sheet that I printed out for her to learn the bones and for labelling.

We spent a few days talking about and learning the names of the bones.  We played Simon Says touch your ...... as well ask just asking family members to touch a bone for L to learn.  I found a fun site where L could drag and drop the names of the bones onto a skeleton.  After all of this fun review L knows her bones!

  

Next we moved onto what actually makes up a bone.  We used one of the books we borrowed from the library to find a diagram of a bone and then we made this model out of a pool noodle, felt, a large straw and some embroidery thread.  It was a two person job as one had to hold the bits while the other used the glue gun.

After we had finished L labelled all of the parts.

The next day we learned about different types of bones.  I found this great printout explaining about the different types and then she coloured them in on the skeleton.

We also talked about joints and how they work and read about them in our library book.  We talked about how they have cartilage between them to keep them from grinding together and looked at another handout on the different types of joints.

 A fun game of joint charades followed where I wrote down some actions such as kick a ball, hop on one foot, throw a ball and then we had to act them out and say which joints we were using.

L finished off by labelling the joints on her cardboard body.

To recap I wrote out some research questions for L going over all of the things we had learned, L labelled all of the bones and joints once again on a handout and made a title page for her binder.

Next up the nervous system!

*If you would like to find any of the resources I used please take a look at my human anatomy Pintrest board*

Acting Camp

This past week has been all about acting camp.  I signed L up for the full day camp which was all about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Luckily for L we had read the book together last summer so on the first day she already new which character she wanted to be and dressed the part!

The children painted and made all of the sets and practiced a very condensed version of the play to present on Friday.

L had an absolute blast and shared the role of Lucy with several other girls as well as helping with lighting and props.  The instructor was so delightful as he really created a fun, no pressure atmosphere where everyone felt confident and comfortable joining in.

L's grandpa came across from Vancouver to see the play and brought her these two masks to paint in keeping with the drama theme of the week.

Resist canvases

 We made some art for the kids bedrooms over the weekend.  I've wanted to do more resist paintings for some time now and we finally got around to it.

L painted a previously used canvas black.  While she was doing that I looked through Google images for some giraffe and elephant silhouettes.  I copied them into a word document and scaled them to the appropriate sizes.  We then cut them out and traced them onto some black contact paper.  Once we'd cut them out a final time we arranged them on the canvases.

L and LJ got to work painting over the whole canvas.  L decided to make an African sunset and I just gave LJ colours that matched his bedroom.

All painted and waiting for them to dry before peeling off the contact paper.

Here are the finished products.  I did a bit of touching up around the edges and then we hung them on their walls.  I love this way of painting.  So easy yet so effective!