The Body

The last couple weeks, we have been learning about the body.  We started with each child writing down one or two parts of the body to learn more about.
Here is the consensus:
skin
brain
eyes
bones
cells


I went to the library and collected many books about the human body.

The epidermis was a logical place to start. The children already knew that skin: "holds in all your parts" and that "it keeps your blood in so you don't bleed till you die".   From a Bill Nye DVD we gained more information about skin from a scientific point of view.  We also listened to an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", for a fictional perspective on the subject.  

After exploring the skin, I added digestion to the list of systems we would learn about.  I have found that the children love this topic because it ends in the popular subject of "poop".  
Digestion starts with the teeth so we made tooth puppets.  Then the food travels down your throat to the esophagus.  At this point the children learned that there is another tube called the trachea that brings air to your lungs.  So that food doesn't go down the wrong passage way, there is a special flap called the epiglottis that keeps food from going in your lungs.  The children loved all these scientific terms.  


Next, on to the stomach, where the food is mixed with digestive juices.  The children made mock esophagus's and stomachs to take home and do a quick experiment with water and a cracker to simulate what happens in to food in the stomach.  The next day we talked about what happened and then talked about the final stages of digestion that happen in the small and large intestines.