Human Body-Hands on Activities

Hi guys! We are using Apologia Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology, and we are loving it. I wanted to share with you some fun hands on activities that have helped my boys retain all the information we learned.

Cells:

To help us remember all the different parts of a cell and their function, we made an 

edible cell using jello and candy. 

Skeletal System:

We love our skeleton puzzle. After putting the puzzle together the boys worked

as a team and labelled as many bones on the body as possible. You can go here to read

more about his fun activity. 

Digestive System:

Simulating what happens to your food once it's in your stomach. 

Respiratory System:

 Lung model

Blood:

 What's in a drop of blood. This activity helped the boys remember all the different parts of the blood.

Plasma,red blood cells,white blood cells, and platelets. 

Heart:

heart model using graham crackers, marshmallows (small and large ones)

we used icing with food coloring but you can use paint. 

Home made stethoscope. This was easy to put together and it really works. 

We spent a good amount of time on the heart since it's so complex. I put together this activity to help us remember how the blood circulates around the body. You can read all about this activity here.

Nervous System:

Nerve necklace.

Brain:

model of the brain using play dough.

What would happened to our brain if we didn't have fluid around it.

To do this activity you need two real eggs, 1 plastic egg, and corn syrup(brain fluid)

The "brain" with no fluid around it. Once we dropped the egg it cracked easily. 

The "brain" with fluid around it had very small crack. The fluid acts as a cushion protecting the brain.

Your Senses:

Model of the ear using air drying clay. After everything dried the boys painted all the different parts

and we labelled our ears.

I hope you enjoyed reading about all those activities. We have 3 more chapters left in our science curriculum. I'll add the rest of the activities once we complete them. Science is one subject that I have to incorporate hands on learning, this helps the material and all those new vocabulary stick better.


Linked Up With:
Weekly Wrap Up
Practical Monday

Preschool Nursery Rhyme Activities-Baa Baa Black Sheep

Hi guys! I hope you guys had a fabulous week. This weeks theme was Nursery Rhymes for my preschooler. We focused on Baa Baa Black Sheep. Here are some of the fun activities we did this week. You can find the printables I used at the end of this post.

Story Sequencing/Retelling:

As I sang the song with him he used the character cards to retell the story.

Story sequencing using a sensory bin with black beans and sheep. He loved this activity! 

Phonics:

Uppercase/lowercase matching.

Sand letter writing (he didn't write this A by the way, I helped him by placing my hand over his finger).

Name practice sheet. I had little sheep to help us spell out his name, but he wanted Lego men :). So we went with it. 

Math:

He sorted the sheep and made a big/small pattern with them. 

Craft:

Resources:

1. PreK Pages Baa Baa Black Sheep Pack
2. Nursery Rhyme Sequencing
3. Craft Idea
4. Name Practice Printable

Make Your Own Fairy Tale Book

Hi guys! I wanted to share a fun way for your child to publish their own fairy tale story. The boys have recently been working on writing their own fairy tales. I thought it would be fun to make their own books. If your interested how we did this keep reading.

The boys started off by aging their paper using a tea bag and some warm water. 

We used water color paper but I am sure card stock works just fine. 

Once the paper dried I burnt the ends to give it a worn out look. You can just

have your child rip the ends if you don't want to burn it. 

With my help they found clipart to match the characters in their story. Here is my 

first grader coloring his princess who loves to read. 

We made the O in once upon a time really fancy. He drew a tree inside and decorated it with vines. 

My 3rd grader drew poison apples inside his O.

I drew light lines to guide them so their writing was more neat. 

Once they finished writing their story inside the book. I used some string to bind the book. 

They added their pictures and numbered the pages. 

That's it! It was really fun and the final copy turned out really nice. You can make this book for any story not just fairy tales.

Click on the image to check out the entire fairy tale unit. 

Linked Up With:
Practical Mondays
Montessori Mondays 
Preschool Kindergarten Community 

Fairy Tale Writing Unit

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you all the fun we had with our fairy tale writing unit. First let me start off by saying these units are incredible. They contain book suggestions, grammar, hands on fun, anchor charts, and step by step instructions. My boys have loved each and everyone of the writing units we've done so far, and this one was no different. Amy and Hope have put so much thought and creativity into each unit I seriously recommend you check out both their blogs and TPT stores.

We read Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as our mentor text. We talked about story elements (character, setting, problem, solution, and events). We also talked about what a fairy tale is and the things it contains ( magic, talking animals, pattern of 7 and 3). Once they understood all that we started brainstorming ideas for their own stories. We created an anchor chart to gather all our initial ideas and they transferred it over to their worksheet.

The next day we took all our ideas we brainstormed and wrote the beginning, middle, and end of their stories.

They worked on an exercise to help them learn transition words in a story. 

They also created this fun mirror craft. They loved this challenge they had to break the evil queens

spell and put all the sentences and transition words back in order. If you make anything into a challenge

my boys are all in. 

taking their ideas and writing complete sentences and using transition words. We 

also worked on writing a good hook to capture the readers attention. 

This was my favorite activity. Getting rid of the choppy and boring sentences using conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. They pull out a conjunction/subordinating conjunction and try to rewrite one of their boring sentences. 

We also replaced "said" with more of a vivid verb. 

Publishing:

Even though the file does come with a really nice craft and writing paper template to publish the final work. I thought it would be nice if they made their own story books. We used water color paper and stained it using tea bags. 

I burned the ends of the paper to make it look old (the boys didn't help with this part). They picked out their characters (we just searched for clipart online).

Coloring his story characters. 

Finished Books

Extra (not part of the unit):

I also had the boys read and listen to a lot of different fairy tales. After reading one they worked on these fairy tale pennants. 

We hung them up in our school room. They look so adorable!