Horn Homeschool: Weeks 17-20

Our month of January was devoted to studying the human body.  Following this basic lesson plan (thanks to homeschoolshare.com), we did several science lessons, demonstrations and readings which covered most of the body's systems.

We started the unit study with a WONDERFUL and extensive lesson on the body with our homeschool group.  It was a great way to kick-start the human body fun!

After that initial lesson, I used the rest of the first week to talk about how to take proper care of our bodies.  We read books on topics such as healthy eating, exercise, sleep, and cleanliness.

The next three weeks we learned about bones, lungs, skin, the five senses, the heart, the digestive system, muscles, the immune system, and the brain.  We read LOTS of books.  We did several fun demonstrations.  We made manipulatives and watched movies.

The human body is pretty stinkin' amazing.  As we read and learned together I kept finding myself in awe of this complicated machine God has knit together. 

Here were the highlights of our four week study:

• Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body by Donald M. Silverman.  This book was phenomenal!  A lot of crafty learning books are pretty lame but this book actually taught concepts through the crafty manipulatives.  Through the course of our study we made paper arms with muscles to demonstrate pulling action, skin diagram with hair follicles (made of yarn), and a skeleton to review various bone names.
• Boiling bones.  To show Chloe the various parts of bone, I purchased some beef bones at the grocery and we boiled 'em up.  We also cooked up some chicken thigh bones to compare to the beef bones.
• Magic School Bus Human Body dvd.  I LOVE THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS!  Talk about making complicated unseen concepts come alive!  Wow.  We watched all three body episodes repeatedly.  The dvd was entertaining, packed with education and enjoyable enough to watch over and over again.  I'm certain my kids understand the digestive process solely because of this fabulous dvd. 
• Human body poster and model.  My mom scored a few body books for us at yard sales and one of them opened up into a life size poster!  It was hanging in our dining room/school room for the duration of our lessons and it was fantastic to be able to take the kids to the poster and point out various parts.  Additionally, I had a simple body model we used primarily to learn the parts of the digestive system.  We named him Hugh.  The kids had loads of fun taking Hugh's organs in and out.
• My Amazing Human Body computer software.  I picked this computer game up at the library not realizing what a valuable teaching tool it would become.  Chloe spent many an hour playing the games and she learned much without even realizing it!  The interactive cd not only taught body basics but it also allowed for body exploration and unguided learning.  One memorable activity let the user choose a body part or organ and then do various virtual things to learn more.  You could virtually poke the organ to see it's texture/density, take an xray, or turn the organ around 360 degrees. 

This was a super fun unit study but I wish we could have done it justice!  We didn't do much with the circulatory, nervous or respiratory systems.  At times like these I remember Chloe is in KINDERGARTEN.  She'll catch up when she gets to high school biology.  :)