Homeschool Elementary Anatomy Unit

We just finished our first year of homeschool a couple months ago and I have to say I absolutely loved it. I have been reading and researching and planning next year and getting really, really excited. So today I'm going to post our human body unit that we did. If you want to use my ideas, here they are. Keep in mind that this was geared at an early elementary school audience, and feel free to adjust to your family's needs.

Last year when I was planning our coursework for this year I came across this awesome book.

And I knew that's what I wanted to use to teach my kids anatomy this year. It has lots of fun, hands-on models and examples, and we have had fun using them.

We've also used a few ideas from this book. But I think some of their models are more complex than they need to be.

I bought a skeleton shower curtain and we named him Mr. Bones and hung him up in our homeschooling room. We have enjoyed adding his organs, veins, and arteries.

I have loved seeing my kids learn about themselves and their bodies. And I have loved hearing the things they say. Perhaps Abby, finishing up kindergarten, has had the best quotes here. Recently Grace scraped her leg and Cameron was applying a bandage. "Look, Grace! Platelets!" Abby squealed.

Another day Abby was explaining why she had to go to the bathroom when she was supposed to be helping to clean the kitchen (and hadn't needed to go any earlier). "My kidneys weren't done putting it all in before," she protested.

Grace hasn't perfectly mastered all of her letters. But she does know that red blood cells carry oxygen all over her body.

Jake's favorite parts have probably been the models and experiments that involved food. One exception might be when we made a model tongue complete with labeled taste buds so the kids could learn which parts of their tongues identify tastes that are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. For the bitter test I gave them each a tiny taste of baking cocoa. Jake went to wash his mouth out in the sink afterwards.

Emma has enjoyed the food experiments and coloring on any available surface (including herself) while the rest of us explored. It's hard to know what else she's learned. Maybe in a couple years she'll tell us.

You can click here for my lesson plans. Happy homeschooling!

Forewarned Is Fair Warned

Don't you love summer? Hikes. Bike rides. Playing at parks and splashing at splash pads. Lots and lots of outdoor play. I love letting my kids play around our yard, house, and neighborhood with their friends in the summer.

Cameron recently quadrupled the size of our sandbox and the kids have been having a blast. I love watching them play out there and seeing the castles they build. (I don't love sandy floors and muddy walls, but that's not the point of this post.)

Jake brought water out to fill his moat and topped the tower with a flag. It was pretty fun. 

Shortly after expanding our sandbox Cameron, Abby, Grace, Emma and I were out there playing together one evening. Cameron buried Abby in the sand, and she thought it was great.

After taking this picture Cameron said, "OK, Abby, now look really sad."

Abby: "Why?"

Cameron: "So we can show this picture to your friends who come over and tell them that's what we do to kids who aren't nice around here."

Forewarned is fair warned.

My Daily Job

Sometimes I start thinking that my daily to-do list looks something like this:
1. Help the kids with their schoolwork.
2. Keep the house reasonably clean.
3. Feed our family healthy meals.
4. Be kind and patient with our kids.
5. Spend quality time with Cameron.

Then every once in a while something will happen to remind me that I'm wrong. My daily to-do list should really look like this:
1. Love.
2. Teach.
3. Listen.
4. Love some more.

Recently I had one of those moments.

I had just gotten Emma down for a nap and snuck off to my room to study my scriptures and try to enjoy some quiet. Only a couple minutes had passed when Grace came running down the hall loudly demanding that I make her some orange juice. I started by offering to make orange juice after I studied for a half hour or so, but Grace wasn't going for that option. So I got some frozen OJ concentrate out of the freezer, got the pitcher down, and told her how to do it herself. ( I was a little worried that I would end up with a pitcher of OJ spilled on the floor, but at that moment peace was worth the gamble to me.)

Grace was delighted with the opportunity. Grabbing a stool and stepping up to get the water from the faucet she said, "Now when I'm grown and my kids need juice I'll know how to make it for them."

I headed back to my room a humbler mother. My daily job isn't to get housework and schoolwork and errands all done. My daily job is to love my children and help them develop the confidence and skills to carry them into adulthood. I might forget what my job is. But they know. And fortunately sometimes they are profound enough to remind me.

Teaching Children about Nutrition

A couple years ago after reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Cameron and I began a discussion that lasted throughout the whole year. It started with a question--in 30 years what values do we want our children to embrace, and what do we want their lives to look like? By the end of the year we had drummed out a list of values we want to deliberately teach our children--things like love, faith, gratitude, and integrity. Then, because there were 12 of them, we decided that each month we would celebrate a different value. We try to give each month's value lots of emphasis with family discussions and activities.

In May our value is health. We want our children to understand that when they eat healthily and exercise they show respect for the body God gave them. They will also feel better and live better. This year we stumbled upon a wonderful visual to help bring the point home for the kids.

I got this idea from the book The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects Illuminate How the Body Works, but I simplified it a little for my kids' ages. All you really need is a balance and some dry beans (we used pinto beans.)

We used this Learning Resources balance, which we have as part of our homeschool math toys. If you don't have a balance and don't want to buy one, there are instructions for making one in the book.

I started by looking up basic nutritional needs for my kids using the standards on choosemyplate.gov. Then I colored a bean for each serving of each food group that my kids need each day. For us that was five beans for grains (I colored them orange with a marker), four red-colored beans for protein (I combined dairy into the protein category to make things simpler), and five beans colored green to represent fruits and vegetables.

Once you have your beans colored you can set them aside.

Choose an equal number of plain, uncolored beans to put in one side of your balance.

Then throughout the day after meals and snacks talk to your child about what they have eaten, how many servings that covers, and which food groups are represented. Move the appropriate beans into the empty end of the balance. At the end of the day if they've eaten all the right things their diet will balance.

We rotated so each of my kids would have a turn on different days to use the balance. They got excited about it and loved seeing their diet balance. I loved the increased awareness of what food groups our bodies need, serving sizes, and how many of each we need every day. Teaching children about good nutrition and how to care for their bodies is a wonderful life skill to begin when they are young.