Science Archives - Page 2 of 2

Piecing Together Anatomy

August 2, 2012Tracy4 Comments

This school year, I’m wanting to introduce the kids to anatomy and nutrition. For one, Oldest has been hounding us with questions about how do we eat, where does food go, what is sweat, what do our bones do, and tons more. And conveniently, year one of the classical cycle recommends a study in anatomy since this is the “science” that this time period was most familiar with (think mummification and preserving body organs).

Purchasing a science curriculum would have been very appealing, but it wasn’t really in the budget and probably isn’t in our time-frame either. To fit it in, anatomy and nutrition will need to be very relaxed—once or twice a week and rainy days. I really liked the look of Apologia’s anatomy; but once again, my children are young, and a full curriculum wasn’t really a wise stewardship of funds right now. So, I’ve worked to piece together some resources for our study.

(I did have a friend loan me Answer in Genesis’s God’s Design for Life books and will be using the human body book as a read aloud.)

Usborne’s See Inside Your Body (I already owned.)

Notebooking Pages (my only purchase)

Toddler-size skeleton poster

Experiments, worksheets, and lots of other ideas (Spell Out Loud blog)

Little D’s Nutrition Expedition lesson plans/activities and My Plate printables

For my own prep, I read Gary Thomas’s book Every Body Matters. The book gives a great Christian perspective on why health is important for your spiritual growth.

Thomas illustrates how becoming physically fit can lead to:

increased sensitivity to God’s voice

renewed energy for God’s work

greater joy for living

a fortified soul better able and more willing to serve and love others

The goal in this pursuit is not sculpting thinner or more athletic-looking bodies. The goal is to cultivate stronger, well-nourished bodies that are primed to become, in the words of the apostle Paul, ‘instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the master and prepared to do any good work.’ –(from back cover)

As we embark on these lessons of how are bodies are made and what our bodies need, I want to have the right perspective and I want to teach from the right perspective. Healthy bodies are not a priority so that we live longer or have more energy, because it makes us feel good or it makes us feel better about ourselves; we were created to bring glory to God. Understanding our bodies and what our bodies need is important, not that we can serve ourselves better but that we might serve God better!

I hope to post a little bit more about this book in the month’s ahead, and I can’t wait to share this journey—both with my children and with you!

The life of an amphibian

July 25, 2012Tracy

We’ve made it to amphibians in our summer study of animals and their classifications. Because we spent quite a bit of time last summer on frogs and toads, I hadn’t intended to spend a lot of time on it this summer. But it’s always fun to study tadpoles and polliwogs.

So I picked up a book at our library, printed off some notebooking pages, and sat down with some cool science goodies that my mom sent us a few weeks ago.

First, I read the book to them while they held up the piece that matched the story. Then, I let them look through the book and play with each piece of the frog’s life cycle.

amphibian life cycle lesson for preK and K5

After the kids had touched, held, and played with the pieces for awhile, I pulled out our notebooking page. They studied each stage and then drew it in the boxes of their notebooking sheet. Most of the “art” was pretty easy.

Egg: draw a circle and color a dot in the center; for a spawn, draw several eggs with sides touching.

Tadpole: draw a circle; draw a tale; add a face

With back legs: draw a circle and tale; add back legs and a face

Front and back legs: draw a circle and tale; add back legs, front legs, and a face

Frog: (this is where it got more difficult)

Both of them bawked when I suggested drawing a frog. So we got out our I Can Draw Animals book, turned to the frog page, and drew two very cute frogs!

Notebooking for younger children

But even after the lesson was over, it wasn’t really over. Middlest had all sorts of imaginary adventures for the little frog family; and every time I get them put away, they show up somewhere else.

Littlest love — Even Littlest had a frog to love

Disclaimer: This post contains a link to my consultant site for Usborne books.

Casual Fridays

September 28, 2011Tracy

Last week, I initiated our first casual Friday, primarily because my children can’t remember anything we’ve studied during the week. I finally concluded, why not learn casually instead of fighting the trend?

Thus, on our first casual Friday, we made fall-shaped gingerbread cookies.

And, we worked on our animals of South Africa. First, we made a flip book of our animals.

Flipbook South African animals — The little one was able to review size sorting.

Flipbook SA animals — And we learned one interesting fact about each animal, such as every zebra has a unique pattern. The little one also thought it was hilarious that the lion was part of the cat family. She nearly fell over with the giggles.

I made a pocket by glueing an envelope (sealed and cut to correct height) to a piece of paper. That way, instead of a bunch of flipbooks littering the bedroom floor by the end of the year, they’ll at least have a place to put them in their notebooks.

Next, we took a second set of pictures of those same animals and classified them. For this lesson, all the animals were mammals. So we spent some time talking about what mammals are and how each of their animals fit into this classification. This page also went in their notebooks behind the mammals section.