Half-baked Homeschool

The boys, exhibiting their maternal influence, love life science. Unlike their mother, they are obsessed (beyond the normal length of their usual obsessions) with dinosaurs. When they begged for us to spend this past year studying that very topic in science, I realized that I was far outmatched in "dino-knowledge" (No, Shortbread, I don't remember what Postosuchus is...tell me again), and I chose Anatomy instead. I think I'm still one step ahead of them on this one.

Despite some initial disappointment and pleading to fit a dinosaur unit in at some point, the boys soon warmed to the idea of studying their bodies, and they usually had to remind me when it was time to work on science.

We broke up our study into 9 units:

• Cells
• Brain & Nervous System
• Senses
• Digestive System
• Respiratory System
• Circulatory System
• Muscles
• Skeletal System
• Skin

Each unit was planned for two weeks, but we didn't finish until the end of the year, so you can do the math and figure out that I wasn't diligent about staying on that schedule and skipped science about half of the time.

When we were on task, we used the My Body book for readings and to make a paper model of each boy's body. This involved tracing an outline of each boy on a large piece of paper and then cutting it out and hanging it in our school room. For each unit we would cut and color a new body part or parts and attach them to our bodies.

Here are the boys with their "empty" bodies:

Then, full of organs (with faces peeled down to reveal their brains!):

To accompany our activities in My Body, we used Jim Weise's Head to Toe Science, which provided hands-on activities and experiments for each body system. Though this book is geared toward 3rd - 6th graders, we found plenty of activities that were easy, even for Shortbread. He might not have truly grasped the significance of every activity, but he surely enjoyed them!

Oh, and we started the year by making a Jell-O cell. Enchanted Learning has directions.