The Human Body

The skeleton floor puzzle is taller than the boys!

This month we have been learning about the human body (nervous, circulatory, respiratory, skeletal, muscular, digestive, and reproductive systems).  The boys have enjoyed reading lots of books about the human body and playing skeleton floor puzzle games.

At our Monday homeschool group Halloween party, we made a blood model and did a bone dance.  The blood model included plasma (yellow dyed water), red blood cells (cheerios), white blood cells (marshmallows), platelets (pom-poms), and salt.  The dance was the hokey pokey to the song Spooky Loo by Wee Sing, with bone names substituted for body parts.

Books:  What Happens to a Hamburger by Showers;  The Nervous System by Riley;  Human Body by Bingham;  The Circulatory System by Taylor-Butler; Germs Make Me Sick! by Berger;  Amazing You! by Saltz;  The Respiratory System by Petrie;  The Skeletal System by Petrie;  The Digestive System by Petrie;  The Muscular System by Petrie;  See Inside Your Body by Daynes & Colin;  Digestion and Reproduction by Llamas

Videos:  Scholastic Storybook Treasures: Dem Bones by Barner;  Human Machine (Bodyzone) by Eyewitness

Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian house and pyramid we created with clay.

This week we visited the Bloomsburg Children's Museum.  We toured the museum's Egyptian Tomb exhibit which includes replicas of art, a mummy case, and other artifacts.  The boys also learned how to write their names using Egyptian hieroglyphs.  

At home we built an Ancient Egyptian style pyramid and house.  I cut the foundations and blocks out of natural clay and Ian was the bricklayer.  The pyramid contains passageways with a hidden mummy and his treasures.

Our Monday homeschool group is using the Mapping the World by Art curriculum by Ellen McHenry.  Ian drew maps of Mesopotamia and the Nile River during the first two lessons.

Books:  Mesopotamia by Apte;  I Wonder Why Pyramids Were Built? by Steele;  "World History and Geography" in What Your First Grader Needs to Know by Hirsch

Venn Diagrams

Ian and Eric used a Venn diagram to sort their toy animals by diet: herbivores (left), omnivores (center), and carnivores (right).

This fall we have been working on classifying things with Venn diagrams, and then using the data to make tally charts and bar graphs.

Classifications:

• Acorn collection was sorted into acorns without caps, acorns with caps, and caps without acorns.

• Toy animals were sorted according to diet: herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores.

• Halloween creatures were sorted according to day/night activity patterns:  nocturnal, cathemeral, and diurnal.  Most Halloween creatures, for example witches and ghosts, were determined to be nocturnal (active at night).  Cats are cathemeral (active at night & day) and most humans are diurnal (active at day).

We are also working on skip counting (by twos, fives, & tens), writing numbers to 100, recognizing place value (ones, tens, hundreds), addition facts to 10 +10, and telling time to the half-hour.

Seed Collection & Dispersal

Magnified weed seed that travels by sticking to animal hair.

Seed Activities:

• Collected seeds (dill, coriander, Echinacea, Cosmos, & marigold) from garden to plant next year

• Field trip to Mac's farm to observe soybean combine harvesting

• "Seed Dispersal" puppet show (Hands-on Nature by Lingelbach & Purcell)

• Seed Examination:  looked at various seeds with magnifying lenses, experimented to determine which seeds float/sink in water and which seeds float in the air

Books:  The Tiny Seed by Carle;  What Kinds of Seeds are These? by Roemer;  From Seed to Plant by Gibbons