Lilliput Station Adventures

March 19, 2007

The Human Body

We've been doing a study on the human body. Last week we studied blood. Did you know that an adult has about five quarts of blood in their body? A child has three and a baby has one. This was my five year old's favorite fact. Janice Van Cleave's book Play and Find Out About the Human Body has easy activities to demonstrate this and many other facts. We also have been using the Wild Goose science kit on the human body (available through Timberdoodle) and some tapes in the Designed By God series. These aren't available anymore, but if you can get ahold of them, they're really great. They were put out by Chariot Books (David C. Cook Publishing) and star Bob Devine as "Uncle Bob." I don't know how many there were originally, but we have Uncle Bob Talks With My Digestive Sysyem, Uncle Bob Talks With My Circulatory System, Uncle Bob Talks With My Central Nervous System, and Uncle Bob Talks With My Respiratory System.

Here's a great recipe that shows the composition of blood:

Make A Candy Model of Blood

White blood cells and platelets each make up about 1/2% of the volume of blood. Red blood cells make up 44%. Plasma makes up the remaining 55%. * I did find slightly different numbers from different sources, but these are the numbers we based our measurements on.

mini marshmallows = white blood cells

sprinkles = platelets

red hots = red blood cells

corn syrup = plasma

You will need approximately:

½ t. mini marshmallows (about 3)

½ t. sprinkles

1 cup + 2 T. + 2 t. red hots

1 ½ cups + 1 t. corn syrup

The kids thought this was yummy and we were all suprised that there were so few platelets and white blood cells, yet they do their jobs so effectively.

Here's another activity that looked fun. It is a "crime scene" investigation of blood. We haven't done it, because I plan to do a forensic science unit with the kids in the future, but it looks really good. I would have never thought of usind hydrogen peroxide to identify if a substance was blood, but it makes sense.

Also, if you are looking for worksheets to use in your notebooks, lapbooks, etc. I found some great ones here:

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3028650

http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/body.htm

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Printables/Human_Body/index.shtml

http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/worksheets/TCM/science.shtml

http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/lessonplans/profbooks/bodybook.pdf

http://www.sciencewithme.com/worksheets.php?cid=1

http://www.lung.ca/children/grades1_3/index.html

http://www.dibujosparapintar.com/english_activities/dr_human_body.html

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/works.html