Today, I am so happy to bring back Science Saturday with The Homeschool Scientist as we work on completing our journey through Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology.
This lesson is very short, which I thought was excellent since we were getting back into our groove after a long break. The study only took a couple of hours one morning.
We started the study with a YouTube episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy. As silly as some of it was, the video is extremely thorough and the children loved it. When the video was over, we moved to the table to discuss the vocabulary they had learned as we walked through the text and examined the different pictures and diagrams in the book. I also asked the children to look at their bodies and try to find some veins.
Then, it was on to the really fun part.
The Blood Model
I was out of Cheerios and so I did some looking around the blogosphere for inspiration on building a model of our blood, stopping briefly by Spell Outloud and Life with My Giggly Girls. Ultimately, I turned to my own pantry and had to make do with what we had… but I think it turned out really well.
What you need:
- Cooking oil
- Cinnamon hot candies
- Miniature marshmallows
- Raisins
- Clear container
I used a robust olive oil that I didn’t like but could not bare to throw in the trash. Good thing! It came in handy at last… just not for cooking. Anyway, the oil is a yellowish color like plasma and I ask Lira to pour it into the jar. Franc added the red hots to remind us of the red blood cells. Once they were in the jar, Lira noticed that the olive oil had a red tint. Perfect! Since the red blood cells are what gives us the red in our blood.
Ariary had to join the fun, so her job was to add the marshmallows that we used for white blood cells. Then, it was Ruble’s turn and he placed the raisins in the jar to be the platelets.
Role play the blood flow
As we finished our lesson, the living room was a mess. So, I asked the children to pretend that their toys were the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Their job was to put them all in the vein (a large empty box) and push it down to the heart (their rooms). The biggest laugh for me came when they were pushing the box and it bumped a chair. Lira shouted, “Wait. The valve is closed. Okay, now we can go.”
Field trip to the lab
Conveniently (or maybe not so much convenience as coincidence), I needed to make a quick trip to the lab for some blood work. The children tagged along and were eager to see how my platelets stopped the flow of blood.
Make sure you slip by to visit with The Homeschool Scientist and see how they studied lesson seven, blood.
Additional Blood Unit Study Resources
- Various printables for reading comprehension based on the study of blood and/or the circulatory system at Ed Helper
- Recipe for homemade blood from Science Sparks
- Examination of the marrow in a chicken bone from The Homeschool Den
Excellent demo, Mommy! Sure wish I would have had more hands-on kinds of experiments when I was growing up…I sure would have remembered more. =) I love those smart kids of yours!
Thank you, Marsha. They amaze me with how quickly they pick things up. One day, they are going to out-smart me. 😉
WOW! Thank you so much for sharing these resources and creating that awesome powerpoint! And I am thankful as well that you told someone else how to download the PP viewer; we lost the product key to our Microsoft Office a LOOOOOONG time ago and up until now hadn’t been able to view PP’s.
We aren’t using a particular curriculum for human anatomy so this is so helpful!