Thursday, May 10, 2012

Geography: Starting on Africa

Hello Readers,

Well Miss S and I have made a start on Africa. I must say that I am a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of countries but we have made a start on it. My goal is to have it completed by her birthday in August.

Here are some photos: For the map please go to www.ducksters.com

Placing Algeria on the map

Picking out the next country

Deciding where it will be placed on the wall

Placing Angola on the map



Happy Teaching
Kimba

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Ye old Pudding Paints

Hi readers,

This is an oldie but a goodie. My daughter has been on my back about finger painting and I didn't want to go and buy any so I made them with some vanilla instant pudding and food dye a wola, finger paints  done cheaply.

What you need
1. 1 packet of instant pudding
2. Milk
3.Food dye
4 Paper

Method
Follow instructions on packet, separate pudding into ramekins or container of some kind and food colouring put in fridge to set. Listen to children bug you for 15minutes while pudding sets

Then have fun

Here are some photos









Sunday, May 6, 2012

learning about the Human Body

Hi Readers,

For a while now I have been teaching my eldest and (some what my youngest) about the Human Body with this great DVD called Human Biology by PeterWeatherall. Which goes through many of the body's system and has a great catchy song that accompanies each body system, but to help my youngest really fathom the Human Body I wanted to give her some more 'hands on' experience to really understand how we work.

Don't worry I didn't take her to the local morgue or anything like that. I did however, find a great book with some age appropriate experiments to do and it was a bargain price of $5 woo hoo and really who can pass up a bargain???  
Mini scientist My Body by Lisa Burke


So here is the first one I did with her,  BODY DETECTIVES


What you will need.

1. A big sheet of Butcher paper
2. Colour construction paper (lots of different colours depending on how many organs you want to do0
3. A black texta for drawing the organs and labelling them
4. Scissors
5. Double sided sticky tape or glue or blue tak (depending on if you want to take the organs on and off to do the project over and over again)






Draw around your child's body and stick up on wall
Draw and cut out major organs. Clearly mine are not to scale. My heart is way too big and so is the brain but in this the object is to 'understand' where the organs are in the human body. I chose 6. Miss S corrected me that the intestines were 'Actually the large intestine Mum' This has been corrected.

'The Body' ended up falling down so we did the activity on the floor Here she is ready to stick on the lungs



Lungs are on
Heart on. Yes she did need a little help knowing exactly where to stick the heart. She knew roughly but she kept putting the heart more to the right. I got her to put her hand on her chest to feel her heart be beating. I said your hand is slightly to your left so your heart in the picture needs to be slightly to the left.
Stomach on.

Brain now going on no help needed with this one. Even Miss A watched and tried to 'help' much to the disgust of her older sister

Liver on. As you can see it is slightly over sized but I had to help with this one and explain where it went. She had a slight idea but we have not really talked much about the Liver and its many functions yet.

Large Intestine going on she knew all about this one she even lines it up so 'poster S' could poop.

Finished Product and a happy girl. Although I am aware it is not Anatomically correct.

 I really enjoyed doing this project with her. I found out that she actually knows quite a bit about the human body she even spoke about the 'chyme' that her stomach makes, which she learnt from watching the Peter Weatherall DVD www.kidsinglish.com and knew a lot about the digestive system and the importance of poop. Which made me laugh. We now have this hanging up on our wall!!

We then watched some of the Human Biology DVD again. It is divided up into segments so we watched the digestive system, Respiratory System, Nervous System and Circulatory system to back up what we have learnt.

If I was to do this again I would add the Oesophagus, Pancreas and the Gall Bladder just to make it more interesting and last a bit longer as an activity.


I hope you enjoyed this blog and find this a great activity to do for the cold winter days ahead or if you are in the Northern Hemisphere an activity to do when you are inside because it is too hot.


Happy Teaching
Kimba,