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Human Body

We are coming to the end of our human body unit. It's been such a fun curriculum for us, and a steal at only $12 (!)--full of experiments, crafts, and great books. 

I last posted about the circulatory system unit. Since then, we've done the respiratory system, digestive system, and urinary system. Here are some highlights. 

Respiratory system: 




We recorded an experiment about breathing and heart rate at rest vs. after some jumping around. 


We tried to use homemade puffy paint to make a model of the respiratory system. The puffy paint (shaving cream and liquid glue) didn't stay puffy, but anything with paint is still fun! 

We tried twice to make a model of the lungs and diaphragm using a water bottle and some balloons. Neither worked! So we watched a video of someone making it on YouTube. Oh well! 


Digestive system: 


I guess I only have one picture from this unit, but it was a fun one! One activity was mashing up graham crackers in a bowl, with a little bit of water, to model teeth and saliva. Then we scooped the graham cracker into a plastic bag and squished it around with vinegar for a while to model the stomach and stomach acid. 

Another activity was experimenting with holding different types of food in our mouths to see what the saliva could do. We were just supposed to compare a cracker vs. cheese, but the girls got so curious about this that I had to raid the cupboards to find other things to compare. We'd hold the food in our mouths for 30 seconds without chewing, then spit it out on a plate and talk about what happened. 

I really liked studying this system because we spend a lot of time eating, and the basics of the process really seemed to click with both girls. At snack time: "My esophagus is squeezing the food down to my stomach!" At breakfast time, poking belly: "I'm going to help my stomach squish up my food!" Or, "Is my dinner in my small intestine now?" 


Urinary system: 

Our experiment in this unit was to mix water, red food coloring, and sand to represent blood with waste that goes into the kidneys. We then poured this into a coffee filter (the kidney) to watch the filtering process. 

An art project used kidney beans, a coffee, bean, and string to model the parts of the urinary system. 





At the end of the urinary system unit, we finished up the last page of the flip books they've been working on all fall. If you want to see inside, come on over and ask Anya and Alina to show you! They were pretty excited to staple the pages together and read through each page again, seeing the work they've done and snapshots of what they've learned. 


We'll finish with an add-on unit about the reproductive system (I still need to plan that) and some review activities from the unit study. 








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