The Systems of the Body

 SCIENCE

We have been learning the systems of the body. Last time I told you about the muscular system and the skeletal system, now let's cover the other systems!

First we learned about the nervous system. Dustin got me this awesome model of the brain which really helped explain things. I feel like I was so much better at knowing about the brain now that I've taken all those psychology classes. Especially my cognitive psychology class---by the way, of subject but I'm on the waiting list for my master's program! Keep your fingers crossed!---

We talked about memory, and how you have a better memory if you can put things into a picture or story. That was what all these shapes is about. Also, I had all of my crew make "brain hats" that are really awesome that map out where everything is in your brain. And also, we have a cat now...not sure if I've mentioned that before....but she likes to be in the centre of things. Especially when I'm trying to get ready for things.

And now for the dissections. I again got my butcher friend to help me out. Here is me planning all the different dissections I'm going to need:

For the excretory system, we digested kidneys. I will never forget four years ago when we did this and soon after I got huge kidney stones. As I was cutting one of the kidneys open, I accidentally squirted Abraham with what was most likely urine from the kidney! He won't forget that any time soon! 

And since the skin's sweat is part of the excretory system, we talked about skin too and talked about our unique finger prints.

Then we learned about the respiratory system. I got lungs connected to the heart and trachea. This was absolutely the most involved and bloody dissection of the year, and one kid started dry heaving. THAT's never happened before!!! We saved the hear for next class, but we tried to fill up the lungs with air. It didn't work quite as well as it did four years ago.

Then we learned about the circulatory system. This is when we dissected the heart. We also did other things, like seeing if we were as fast as a heart beat at moving liquid from one place to another. 

And we learned a bit about blood. (I went over time...I always do...) I taught them about blood types and I had three blood test kits. I had two people get their blood tested, but they were both O-. I thought I did the test wrong. What are the chances that both kids (William and Rosina) would have O-, the most rare kind of blood?! But the next week, we tested one more kid, and they ended up to be A+, so I think I did it right. I made the mistake of saying "If William and Rosy get married, all of their kids would be O-" which made William give a huge smile and say "I didn't say it!" since he has a crush on Rosina. Rosina had no comment.

The next week we learned about the digestive system. I just got a liver from the store. We learned about how long the small intestines are. That's what this photo is supposed to show.

And we also talked about the importance of teeth as part of digestion, which is a good excuse to get out disclosure tablets, which the kids LOVE.

And we did an experiment with the liver that worked really well. We basically made a volcano from liver parts and hydrogen peroxide and then we proved it turned into oxygen by reigniting some fire with the oxygen.

That leaves just the reproduction system left.

My little group was NOT about to get an anatomy lesson about the reproduction system. In fact, I always put up this poster:

And my little people almost died of embarrassment from it. I had to explain quite sternly that there was nothing naughty about it, and gave a little lecture about when things were not naughty, but they still were squeamish. 

SO I strictly stayed to DNA and heredity when talking about the reproductive system.

I had them make a DNA strand from themselves, and I think this is by far the BEST way to explain DNA and how it replicates. 

Also, we talked about dominant and recessive. I even had them get into pairs and roll dice to find out if their genes went into their "babies" that they made together! Hahahaha

Oh, and that's Abraham in that photo up there, with his DNA he made out of candy.

Skeletons and Muscles

 For science, we learned about skeletons. Dustin actuall bought me an entire skeleton to help me teach, and that was super fun. We learned about the make up of bones, the different kinds of joints, and we made a "Back-bone" that had a balloon as a head, and vertebras from rolled up paper and intervertebral discs from soft candy discs. 

Then we learned about muscles. I was not as prepared for this class as I wish I had been. I had made this muscle model every time I've taught biology, but this time, I didn't give myself enough time to make it so it was a sloppy job and didn't work, which is a shame because it really shows how muscles work. I tried to explain it, and maybe they got it. 

We focused a lot on tendons, and I had a hand for every kids where they could pull their "tendons" to close their hands.

And....that's it for science.

Biology Intro and Cells

I finally started my science club, and we had an introduction to biology by learning about what makes something alive, and by talking about natural selection. We had a game where there was red chips and tan chips, and the kids ate 2 red chips and 1 tan chip (because the red ones didn't have camouflage) and pretty soon, all that was left was tan chips! 

Then we learned about the inner working of cells. We made some cells from candy as we went over all the functions of each part. Yummy cells!

William even made a "cancer cell"

The rest of the 2023-2024 school year

I do not have my science book in front of me, so I don't remember everything (I'm in Utah right now) but I want to get this blog-catch-up done with, so bare with me.

The first of the year, our first class was about crystals. I got the kind of crystals that grow really fast, and we had a crystal Christmas tree by the end of class! We also started my sugar crystal candy that I always do for this lesson. We also made borax crystals and we made snowflakes since they're crystals as well!

The next week we did soluble vs insoluble. We also talked about colloids. As part of this we made homemade mayonnaise. 

I don't have any photos of the next week, but I'm almost certain we learned about mixtures and compounds.

The next week we talked about chromatography, but I know that's no the only thing we talked about because it's never the only thing we talk about since I don't have very many lessons about it. We may have also talked about how to test for an element and did some testing for metals. -I might edit this blog when I get back home to my books-

The next week we talked about Ph scales. That was a fun week. We made Ph indicators using purple cabbage and we also made indicators using turmeric. 

(the days I have a lot of photos Amy Bay has come)

The next week I finished up teaching about the Ph scale by making "Butterfly Pea" tea which changes colour when you add honey. This was a BIG hit.

But then we changed gears completely. I had been kind of rushing through the chemistry lessons, and I had started them in the summer, so we had finished all the chemistry in my book, so I changed gears and we went back to learning about weather, because that was something I completely missed while sailing. Don't get me wrong, we got REAL world experience with weather, but I wanted to teach about it.

We learned, umm. I guessing from the photos that we learned about convection currents and air pressure. Yep. Pretty sure.

The next week we talked about air currents a lot more. We talked about how hot air rises and cold air falls. 

Later we even went out to the land and lit Chinese lanterns to celebrate this, however, those lanterns are a PAIN to light! ANd it was windy, so the lanterns went everywhere they shouldn't and it was amazing the Proffitts house didn't light on fire!!

Next time, do it when it's not windy and bring a BLOW TORCH!

The next week we talked about what happens when low pressure and high pressure come together. We even made a little storm in a jar.

The next week we talked about natural disasters caused by weather. Hurricanes, tornadoes, storm surges. etc. I think I needed those 2 litre pop bottles to create tornadoes, so I gave them all pop. I can't remember why else orange pop has to do with natural disasters. 

This was our last lesson about weather, and then we switched to learning about the earth's crust.

We talked about the layers of the earth's crust, and the next week we talked about the ways we can know what kind of rock it is and what it's made of, so we talked about the Moh scale and the sediment left behind in a scratch test and density and lots of things.

We were supposed to have one last class where we learned about earth quakes and fault lines, but my kids had the sniffles, and I was lazy, so I said we should just go to Frank Slide as a field trip instead. 

We did eventually go, but it took so long to get there and it was a bit of a nightmare, so it ended up to be just me and the Peavoys (but the Chelsey Bennitts went early enough....when we were supposed to be there.)

And besides my science club, we also had some pretty epic science experiences. There was the eclipse. Iw were far away from the totality area, but we did see the partial eclipse. We looked through awesome glasses and pin hole cameras we made out of cereal boxes.

Also, we saw some northern lights, however on the night with the strongest solar storms there were CLOUDS grrrrrr.

Also, our science crew found a baby bird that fell out of its nest and forgotten by it's mumma. We (the Roberts) tried to feed it until it was old enough to take care of itself, but sadly it died. But it was still educational. 

And that's it for Science for the school year! Whoo hoo!