A little bit organised!

Yesterday, on the way to meeting friends from school, we talked about the idea of doing a bit of a project on the human body.  Often when we have conversations like this, I think something along the lines of 'I must dig out the books we've got on the topic this evening', but things happen, bedtime comes and I've forgotten about it and when I remind the girls about the conversation they've made other plans for their time or the moment has gone.  Last night, however, just before I went to bed, I actually remembered and found 4 books from our 'non-fiction section' and left them on the kitchen table for the girls to find in the morning. 

I found a couple of sheets to print out - one with the human skeleton and one of the heart - which we looked at together.  K and I in particular looked at the one on the skeleton, she didn't want to have a go herself, but was happy to talk about it and check whether I got things right when I had a go! 

We also talked about various bodily functions, including the circulatory one and about how our arteries and veins have valves in them to keep our body flowing in one direction, and I demonstated this using my wrist and K & M were able to identify which way the blood was flowing in this particular case.

Blood filled vein.

Valve stopping section of vein filling up again.

We also had another look at The Happy Scientist site, this time looking at videos specific to the human body:  Foot circles (draw clockwise circles with your right foot, draw a 6 in the air with your right hand and see what happens), Just a suggestion (which is about the power of suggestion and is making me want to scratch my nose right now!) and The Stroop Effect (how it takes longer to say a list of colours that words are written in if the words themselves say are a different colour e.g. blue green yellow).  K was also very keen an watching the video on how to make a laser projection microscope, so we've ordered a green laser pen from ebay, so we can make our own. 

In addition to this, K in particular spent some time looking at the books I'd left out (mostly whilst eating, which is a slight bone of contention as she takes an inordinately long time eating when she isn't distracted!), mostly a very old copy of the Usborne book, The Flip Flap Body Book. 

This afternoon was a complete change of topic, as we went to see A Mid-Summer Night's Dream at Lakeside.  It was set in the Second World War, with Bottom et al as an air-raid warden and the home guard for example.  K showed just how strongly she feels about tragedies as she was completely unwilling to watch even Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within the play which is ostensibly a tragedy, but which was farcical to point of hilarity.  Sitting where we were she could just lean back and not be able to see, but didn't cover her ears at least, which is progress!  We all enjoyed the production in any case, which is the main thing!