Week-in-Review: May 24-28 2010

It's been a little while since I've done a full wrap up of our preschool week. I've spent a lot of time reviewing our since and Bible, but we have been doing other things as well. Although it was a very full week, it was also a very relaxed one. This was the last week for many of our weekly activities until the Fall.

Music Recital

We started the week with Lexy's music recital. I couldn't have been more proud of my little princess. She sang loudly for everyone to hear and tried her very best!

Besides their keyboard songs, they also got to show some of the other instruments that they learned.
Afterwards, we celebrated with Mamaw and Papaw at Steak-N-Shake!

Writing/Spelling

We finished up Get Ready for the Code for phonics, and we're waiting to get our next book. In the meantime, I'm just following Lexy's lead with what she wants to do for Reading/Spelling/Writing. She loved doing the Code book, so we will definitely continue on with it.

This week, Lexy wanted to write her own book. So, we looked at some books and talked about the different parts of a book. We had a blank Little Golden Book. She brainstormed what she wanted her story to be about and then got to work.

Her story is titled, "Bell Lost Her Shoe." The basic story line is all of the princesses looking for Bell's shoe. She hasn't finished it yet, so I'm anxious to see how she ends it. So far, she has kept with the story line, which isn't always the case when she writes a story.

She has taken a big interest in how to spell all kinds of words lately. One day this week, she went to work writing on the white board. She called for me to come and see what she wrote. This is what I found...

She had written her name along with Mommy and Josiah. I didn't realize that she knew how to spell these words without any help.


Cooking

Both kids do a lot of helping in the kitchen, especially Alexis. She loves cooking! I plan to do a post soon about Math in the Kitchen. She has learned to read fractions and many other math concepts while helping me in the kitchen.

I've recently taken up cake decorating, and Lexy has been eager to decorate her own cake. So after making a cake, I saved my left over icing for her to use on her own cake.

Josiah helped make the batter.

They took turns turning the mixer on and off.

Once Josiah went down for his nap, she got to decorate it. She had so much fun...

...and was proud of her creation!

The finished product!

Science

We wrapped up our formal Human Body Unit this week by studying the brain. I'm sure we'll continue learning and talking about the human body, because her interest continues to grow. I failed to take any pictures, because there wasn't much to take pictures of. I couldn't believe how fascinated she was to look through big books about the brain. I tried to read some more on her level, but she just wanted to go through the books talking about what all the pictures were. Through our discussions she learned quite a bit...

Lessons Learned:

1. Our brains are about the size of two fists put together.

2. The brain is like the control center of our body.

3. The brain allows you to think, feel, move, etc. by sending messages through the body.

4. It sends messages through the spinal cord and nerves.

5. Different parts of the brain control different things.

6. The brain is protected by the skull.

To see our other Human Body lessons see these links: The Digestive System, Muscles, Bones and Lungs, The Five Senses, the Heart and Book List, Introduction

Experiments:

Our brain experiment wasn't much of an experiment. We combined our study of muscles with the brain and talked about how the brain allows us to feel emotions. She used the muscles in her face to show different emotions...happy, sad, surprised, angry, etc.

Random experiment: Lexy asked me why the room spins when she gets dizzy from spinning in a circle. I explained that it was because of a fluid in the ears that helps control balance. When you spin quickly the fluid in the ears moves, and when you stop the fluid keeps moving. While the fluid is still moving around your balance is off. I read somewhere that if you hold your ears after spinning around that it would help that dizzy feeling to go away. We decided to give it a try.

We both made ourselves dizzy and then held our ears. We still felt dizzy. Lexy came up with a few other ideas that she thought would work...hold your head, wrap your arms around yourself. She tried both and neither worked.

Dance Rehearsal

We wrapped up the week with a dress rehearsal for her ballet recital coming up. This will be her first dance recital. She learned that there is a whole lot of waiting, and she was very excited when it was actually almost her turn.

The Human Body: Digestive System

We really have been doing more than Bible and Science around here. I just can't seem to find the time or the energy to blog about it...hopefully soon! However, I do want to update on our study of the human body. It is so fun to hear Lexy dialouge with Josiah about the things that she is learning. She will say things like, "Look, here is a joint. It helps you bend." Or, "Josiah, drink your milk so that you can get calcium to make your bones strong." Sometimes the dialouge is much longer as she tries to describe different processes of the body to him. It is cute to hear her version of what she has learned.

Our study this week took us through the digestive system, and Lexy was fascinated. Once again, most of her learning happened through looking at pictures in Human Body books and talking about them. Here is a list of a few books that we used:

1. The Digestive System by Darlene R. Stille - This book was written in simple enough language that Lexy could comprehend. There were a few parts that went into a little more detail than she was interested in.
2. Eating Right by Elizabeth Vogel
3. The Quest to Digest by Mary K. Corcoran - This book is definitely geared toward older kids, but the illustrations and the way in which it was written grabbed her attention.

Before reading the books or doing any experiments, I asked Lexy where the food that she ate went to. She pointed to her leg. She later found out that she was partly correct. When food travels through the small intestines, the nutrients from the food are absorbed into the bloodstream and taken all through the body.

Experiments:

We talked about whether we could still digest food if we were upside down. How could it to down? We hung upside down while eating a cracker to investigate. She discovered that the food still went down.To show why, we took a tube of toothpaste (I had to remind myself that this wasn't wasting since it was being used for an experiment) and squeezed it. We turned it both ways and watched the toothpaste come out. The esophagus is much like the tube. It is a muscle that pushes the food the direction that it needs to go.

Lessons Learned:

1. Food travels through the body through the digestive system.
2. The digestive system is made up of the esophagus, stomach, small intestines, and large intestines. She can point these out on a diagram.
3. The stomach churns food and mixes it with "stomach juices" which break the food down.
4. Nutrients from the foods go all through the body.
5. Food that can't be digested exits the body.
6. To prevent germs from getting onto the foods we eat, we should wash our hands before we eat.
7. You can help foods move through the digestive system by eating plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Next week, we will wrap up our study of the human body by looking at the brain (not literally).

Other Human Body Lessons:
1. Muscles
2. Bones and Lungs
3. The Five Senses, The Heart, and Book List
4. Introduction

Human Body: Muscles

There is not much to share about our study of muscles. Most of our learning came through reading, looking at pictures in books, and short discussions.

Video:
We also watched a short video from kidshealth.org. There is a whole section on "How the Body Works." We watched the section on muscles. It is definitely geared toward older kids, but Lexy still enjoyed watching it. For some reason it will not let me link to it, or I would



Experiments:

I showed Lexy how to "make a muscle." She put one hand on her bicep and flexed. By doing this, she was able to feel her muscle with her other hand.

Then, we also took turns looking at the muscles in our legs. While wearing shorts, I stood on my tiptoes so that she could see the muscle at work in my calf. Then, she did the same.

We also took some time to stretch our muscles. Her favorite part, by far, was exercising her muscles!
Lessons learned about muscles:

1. Muscles are attached to bones by tendons.
2. We use muscles every time we move.
3. Some muscles are voluntary - we have to make them move.
4. Other muscles work without us doing anything - like our heart.
5. Our muscles become stronger the more we use them.

Other lessons on the Human Body:

1. Bones and Lungs
2. 5 Senses, Heart, and Book List
3. Introduction

Human Body - Bones and Lungs

After a very unproductive week last week, we continued on with our study of the human body this week. Lexy's curiosity about the human body continues to grow. She asks to read the body books over and over and asks many questions. This week, we focused primarily on the bones and lungs.


Bones:

We began our study by forming people out of playdough. We talked about how our bodies would be like our playdough people if we didn't have skeletons.

Josiah concentrated very hard on trying to form a person!



This was Lexy's little person. It turned out cute!

Here, we discovered that our playdough people could not stand up without a skeleton. Lexy described them as "floppy."

Next, she used a magnifying glass to observe chicken bones. She observed that the bones were hard, they had white "sticky stuff" on the top, and there were dents in the top. She learned that the white "stuff" was cartilage, the dent would've been where a joint was, and bones are hard because of calcium.


We did an experiment to see what would happen if the calcium was taken out of the bones. This experiment came out of "Play and Find out about the Human Body." First, she tried to break the bones and discovered that they were too hard to break. We filled a jar with vinegar and placed the bones in the jar. Each day, we take the bones out to see how they are changing. The bones have been in the vinegar for two days and are quite a bit softer. By day 7, they should easily break. The vinegar removes the calcium from the bones.

Notice, she didn't like the smell of vinegar!

Our favorite book for learning about bones was "The Skeleton Inside You" by Philip Balestrino. Lexy enjoyed it and asked to read it several times throughout the week. It also clearly explained the lessons that I was wanting to teach about bones in a way that a preschooler could understand. We also looked through other skeleton books mainly just to look at the pictures.

Lessons learned about bones:

1. There are 206 bones in the human body

2. We move and bend because of joints

3. All of our bones together form our skeleton

4. Bones are hard because of calcium

5. We get calcium from green leafy vegetables and milk

6. Some bones protect organs

7. Bones can break

Lungs:

It just so happened that during the week we were studying lungs, Sid the Science Kid had an episode on Lungs...perfect! Lexy enjoyed watching the episode and asked questions throughout it.

We started our study by watching our chests rise and fall as we took deep breaths. We also used brown lunch bags to breathe into. As she watched the bag fill up, I asked her what it was filling up with. She was confused by the question.

Then, she used her lungs to blow bubbles in water. The harder she blew, the bigger the bubbles got.

The, she tried to blow up a balloon, but was unsuccessful.

Lessons learned about lungs:

1. We breathe air into our lungs to take in oxygen

2. The air we blow out is the bad air that our bodies do not need

3. Our lungs are protected by our ribs (bones)

4. When we exercise we breathe faster to take in more oxygen

To see what we did in our study on the heart and the five senses click here. The book list that we've used is also listed there.

Human Body Unit - 5 Senses, The Heart, and Book List

After about a week of exploring and reading our books on the human body, we finally delved into our studies more this week. I found many ideas from Refined Metals Academy.

Our Big Ideas:
1. We were created uniquely and with wisdom by God.
2. Our bodies are made up of parts that we can see (external) and parts we can't see (internal)
3. Each part has a specific function
4. We need to take care of our bodies by eating healthy foods, exercising, and getting plenty of rest.
5. Our 5 senses help us explore the world that God gave us.


The Five Senses:

We began our talk about the five senses by reading "My Five Senses" by Aliki. Then we had fun using our five senses!

touch: First, Lexy described how each of the textures felt on this Touch and Match board from Discount Supply. She used words such as: soft, bumpy, scratchy, hard, smooth, etc.

sight: She used the same board to match the circles to the correct spot on the board using her sense of sight.

hearing: We played a game using these Listen and Match wooden shakers from Discount Supply. We took turns shaking the boxes and listening to see if they were matches.


We also put on jingle bells and danced around the room to a Kindermusik cd. She loved the sound of the bells as we danced and skipped!

five senses art: We traced and cut a gingerbread man shape from sandpaper. She glued the gingerbread man onto a piece of paper. Then, she used a cinnamon stick to color the gingerbread man. Next, she decorated the gingerbread man with buttons and drew facial features onto him.

All five senses are covered in this little project! She tasted and smelled the cinnamon stick. As she colored with the cinnamon stick onto the rough sandpaper, she could hear the scratching sound. She saw the difference in color when she rubbed the cinnamon on the sandpaper. Lastly, she could feel the difference between the rough and smooth paper.

The Heart:

Our science experiment for the heart came from "Play and Learn about the Human Body." We took a balloon and filled it with water (colored red to look like blood). We placed a straw in the balloon to represent the aorta. Lexy lightly squeezed the balloon to represent the pumping that our hearts do. She saw how the pumping pushed the water out of the balloon, just as our heart pumps blood out and into our bodies. She really enjoyed this experiment and asked to do it several more times!

She learned that our hearts are muscles that grow as we get bigger. Our hearts are about the size of our fist.

She listened to Daddy's heart when he was relaxed.

Then, they both ran and jumped around for 1 minute. Afterwards, she listened to Daddy's heart again. She noticed that it was beating much faster. She also said that if felt as if her heart were going to pound out of her body.

She made a homemade stethoscope using a paper plate, aluminum foil, yarn, and one cup cut from an egg carton. She cut the inside from the paper plate and decorated it with stickers. Then, we covered the egg carton cup with aluminum foil and attached it to the plate using yarn. It turned out cute. She used it to listen to her stuffed animals' hearts.
She also used the stethoscope from her doctor's kit to listen to Josiah's heart. It actually looked really well!

She also learned that exercise is good for the heart!

lessons learned about the heart:

1. The heart is a muscle about the size of your fist

2. The heart pumps blood that carries oxygen throughout the body.

3. Blood travels through veins and arteries.

4. We can see our veins in our wrists and our arteries under our tongues.

5. Veins look blue and arteries look red.

6. Exercise is good for the heart.



Our Human Body Book List: These are the books that we've read or that I've got some ideas from for our unit.

1. The Busy Body Book by Lizzy Rockwell - A Kid's Guide to Fitness

2. Play and Find Out about the Human Body by Janice VanCleave's - Easy Experiments for Young Children - This is a great resource for simple experiments!

3. Why can't I Eat Just Candy? - by Ruth Thomson

4. Me and My Amazing Body by Joan Sweeney - This has been our favorite so far!

5. What's Inside? My Body?

6. The Human Body - Disney Learning

7. The Senses by John Gaskin

8. My Five Senses by Aliki

Next week we plan on covering the lungs and bones!