The Skeletal System Week 2

School is back in full gear this week! The boys started their dance lessons in the midst of babies having hand foot and mouth, but we are on the mend. We just have a one that is croupy. 

This week we dove into the skeletal system. We started with the skull. We talked about how wise God is to create us with thick skulls to protect our brains, and how he put a special layer of fluid between your brain and skull for added protection. We did an experiment by putting and egg into a glass sealed container and each of the children took a turn running through the house with it. When they opened it the egg had cracked. Next we did the same thing but this time we added water to our container and again each child took a turn running. This time when they opened it the egg was fine. 

What a great way to show God designed our body to protect us. 

We also read about cartilage, and how it absorbs shock.  I had each of the kids slap the table, and then I had them slap it again but this time onto a pillow.  Explaining that is exactly what cartilage does for out bones.

We then covered all the bones of the body, which were the smallest which were the largest.  We talked about how your arms together are about the same length of your entire body is tall. They each took a turn laying on the floor measure their arms spread open and then laying down inside the markers.

Did you know there are 27 bones in the hand and 26 in the foot? All together if you add that up there are 106 bones just in your hands and feet! Pretty amazing when there are only 206 bones in your whole body! Just so we could get an idea of how important the bones in our hands are we taped two of our fingers together during chores one afternoon. This made things a little more difficult but oddly was very motivating.

 These are their interactive notebooks, each day has a section of note taking and writing as well as written activities but I will share that at the end of the unit.

         Lastly for our Friday project day we were analyzing a chicken bone.
First we cooked up a chicken wing, then they removed all the meat from the bone. We were looking to see if there was any cartilage or ligaments. Next we broke the bone in half, looking at the red stuff. That's chicken red bone marrow!! That's where the chicken's blood cells come from. We then placed one half in vinegar and the other in water. The vinegar removed all the calcium salts from the bone, the result after three days was a soft rubbery bone. Where the bone left in water felt the same as it did three days ago.