Together, we continued with our human body unit. We covered the lungs and started learning about our amazing brains this week. As part of our study of the lungs, we completed a vital lung capacity experiment. My daughter was particularly excited about this experiment, as she is a competitive swimmer and practices 13.5 hours per week right now. Clearly, she spends quite a bit of time focusing on her breathing as it relates to her swimming performance. I predicted, based on her training regimen, that she would have the largest vital lung capacity in our family.
The materials for this experiment were quite simple - a clean gallon milk jug, a length of plastic tubing, and sink full of water.
We filled the gallon jug to the top with water, stuck the tubing all the way to the bottom of the jug, and then quickly submerged it in water. After taking a deep breath, the "test subject" blew into the tube as long as he/she could in one breath. The jug also needed to be held down into the water so that the water would not splash up into our faces. When the test subject could not breathe out anymore, we quickly lifted up the gallon jug and measured the amount of water left in the gallon jug. Then the total displaced was subtracted from the total amount to get the vital lung capacity. Not surprisingly, my competitive swimmer's vital lung capacity was larger than anybody else in the family - 12.5 cups!
A close second in vital lung capacity was our middle son. He just started competitive swimming on a USA team in September and he practices for 10 hours a week. Also, not surprisingly, the smallest member of our family had the smallest vital lung capacity. 
My husband was home from work in the afternoon, so, of course, we made him participate as well. 
We watched some great educational videos this week to go along with our current study of the human body. Our favorite was the Bill Nye the Science Guy Brain episode. The optical illusions included in the video were amazing.- Human Body in Action - The Brain and the Nervous System
- Bill Nye the Science Guy - Respiration
- Bill Nye the Science Guy - Brain
- Human Body in Action Circulatory and Respiratory Systems - Schlessinger Science Library
- Fruits and Vegetables by Susan DerKazarian
- How Do Your Lungs Work? by Don L. Curry
- The Dairy Group by Helen Frost
- Dairy by Susan DerKazarian
- Proteins by Justine and Ron Fontes
- The Vegetable Group by Helen Frost
We completed a highly enjoyable hands-on project in which each child molded a model of a human brain from salt dough. I will be doing a separate post about this salt dough brain project but I did include a few pictures below. The children really enjoyed this project and I think they have a much better understanding of the shape of our brains!
The children all continued with their independent work as usual this week. This week I'll focus on their math studies. Amber (7th) is working in Teaching Textbook's Pre-Algebra. She finished Teaching Textbooks Math 7 earlier this school year and has just finished Chapter 3 in Pre-Algebra. So far, much of the work has been review. I sorely miss the self-grading aspect of Math 7! Mason (5th) is working in Teaching Textbooks 5 and he is also using Evan-Moor's Daily Math Practice 5 and Daily Word Problems 5. We are ALL finding the word problems to be quite challenging! Duncan (3rd) is LOVING Teaching Textbooks 4. He always chooses to complete his lesson in math first.
Lastly, we completed a nature study about the pumpkin on Friday. We combined carving our pumpkins with a nature study. I took so many pictures, I'll be doing a separate post about our pumpkin carving nature study. We spent so long with our pumpkins that we decided to wait until next week for our art lesson.
Well, that's our week in review - a busy week full of learning and projects. Check out what other homeschoolers did this week at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-Up.
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