Week in Review - Finishing the Human Body Unit

This week in review covers two weeks, Thanksgiving week and the week after Thanksgiving. We only had school on Monday and Tuesday the week of Thanksgiving - the break was enjoyed by all! The week after Thanksgiving was a busy week as we finished up the Human Body Unit Study.

To finish our study of the human body, we covered the digestive system, urinary system, lymphatic system, endocrine system, and the immune system. We also briefly touched on the reproductive system through an educational video and we covered how a baby grows within his or her mother.

The children also finished their human body models. While I am very happy with the results, it was a very time-consuming and often tricky model to put together. The models are really great, though. The lungs, heart, digestive system, and urinary system are all included, layer upon layer. To really do these models justice, I plan to do another post with more detailed pictures of each layer.

We RARELY do anything fun and hands-on for our ongoing geography study of the United States. Last week, we were studying Iowa and learned that Iowa is a favorite of rock enthusiasts due to all of the geodes. I decided to "dig out" the geodes kit that I purchased a while ago and add that to our geography study for the week.
The boys, in particular, were thrilled about the opportunity to hammer away at rocks for a surprise inside! The geodes were a lot harder to crack open than I had anticipated. I would recommend definitely placing each geode in an old sock to break it open. Also, I would highly recommend NOT doing this activity on your picnic table! Before I came to my good senses, the children had already put some hammer marks in the table. I guess I will have to view them as keepsakes of our activity!
After damaging the picnic table, we moved to the concrete floor for breaking the geodes - a much better choice. The boys were so excited when their geodes broke open! My daughter was slightly thrilled, but mostly just cold so she went back inside after successfully breaking one geode.Here is a picture of one of the geodes that broke in half almost perfectly. After they were broken, we washed them and they became more sparkly in the middle.

Our art lesson last week was "Shape to Line." This will be the last art lesson for my children from our curriculum, Atelier Art, for several weeks. This coming Friday, we will be making gingerbread houses and our holiday break is coming up. I thought the Shape to Line project turned out great! Basically, I set up a still life for the children.

Then, using different colors of construction paper, they tore out the basic shapes of all of the objects and glued them on their papers in the proper places, according to the still life.

Finally, they added in lines to finish the project. All three children did a great job!

Amber - 7th grade...Duncan - 3rd grade...Mason - 5th grade...

If you want to see what others homeschoolers did this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.