Learning about the Nervous system

Before the Christmas break the kids were working on learning about the Nervous system.  We found a couple of resources that I wanted to share.  We are using Prentice Hall Science explorer human body book as our spine, but I pull from lots of resources to gather ideas and experiements.

I was able to borrow this from the coop's library  which doesn't have any late fees so I have been able to keep it for a while and still plan to for several more weeks:)...The coop did have another one on the shelf so I don't feel like I am hogging it too much

I found a great brain game that the kids and I have been playing to better learn about the parts and functions of the brain..

It is called Brain ectomy and you can download it here.

Kids read a question about the brain and its functions and if they get the question right they add a piece to the brain

Kids really like it and we have played it several times already...now they want to challenge Daddy to show him how much they know and see how much Dad knows, LOL

Next we made brain hats 

You can find the free link here

We also learned about neurons and I had the kids construct a poster describing how sensory and motor neurons work and what they looked like.  The kids are working on a Human body lap book and we are constructing our own mini books about each system we are studying as another means of learning about the various human systems.

we put together a poster demonstrating how the sensory and motor neurons works to get the message to and from the brain

We labeled the different parts of the motor and sensory neurons

Our completed poster which is now hanging up in the school room wall

I ordered a dissection kit and we completed our dissection of a sheep's brain.

first we watched a couple you tube videos on sheep brain dissection

The kit I bought did come with written instructions on how to do the dissection but honestly I found the video easier to follow

identifying the spinal cord

Identifying the optic nerve 

cutting the sheep brain in half and identifying the internal parts

taking a closer look at the grey and white matter of the brain

kids were even brave enough to hold the parts of the brain

using pins we labeled the parts of the brain we could identify

We are now diving into the the senses and how they function and will be dissecting a cow's eye soon!