Moving on to muscles and more.

We haven't finished with bones yet, but this afternoon we got some tins of beans out, got A to take off his shirt and talked about muscles.  K & M felt their own and Daddy's biceps and triceps as they were lifting and lowering the tins of beans.  We used our encyclopedia and talked mostly about skeletal and how they often come in pairs and can only contract and they need a partner to pull them back to their relaxed, longer state.  We talked about where the muscles that we had just used must be attached to the bones, talking about the bicep M said that it's attached to the humerus at one end and K worked out that the other end must be attached to the raduis or ulna.  We looked at the pictures and saw just how much of our body is covered in muscle (a lot of it!) and talked about how the muscles are attached to the bones with tendons, such as the Achilles tendon (we haven't ventured into Greek mythology yet though).  Previously we'd discussed the fact that paeleontologists work out how dinosaurs moved and looked because they can see where muscles were attached to fossil bones.  We also talked briefly about the two other types of muscle; cardiac muscle (that never gets tired) and smooth muscle (that forms part of organs such as the stomach). 

Speaking of the stomach we also had a lovely talk over lunch about the digestion process, with M correctly identifying the start of it as taking place in the mouth and then we talked about where our stew would be (still in the stomach) and where it would be going next and of course ending up!

In other news we got Carcassonne out for the first time in ages.  It was a really good game with M & A, who were a team, narrowly winning.  I have also played Phase 10 with M again a couple of times after a long gap because M went off it seemed that I really was winning all the time, fortunately she has won on both of these occasions, so now we have proof that I don't in fact win all the time and she's much happier about playing with me!