Satori Smiles

The past few weeks we’ve been learning R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey’s Growth and Genetics lesson. I wanted Daddy to participate, so we’ve been doing it on the weekends. Last week we looked at the traits Satori inherited from each of us. Today we played with fingerprints!

Here’s Satori’s little fingerprints, where we then examined arches, loops and whorls. At the bottom, we added thumbprints of Daddy, Mama and our cat, and then one of us did it one more time as a Mystery Print to figure out whose it was.

Looking at those identifying prints a little closer…

To make these colorful fingerprints, we used this fingerprint pad from Lakeshore Learning. It didn’t do the very best job, and neither did our Melissa & Doug ink pad, but we got our prints between the two. Further research led me to discover that there are special formulated inks if you really wanted to take some serious prints, but this was just for fun, so we were fine.

Additional resources on Fingerprinting include:

• Creative Chemistry – Fingerprinting – Taking your prints, examing your prints. Includes a helpful print-out if you don’t have the RSO Fingerprint Lab sheet
• Ed Emberly’s Complete Funprint Drawing Book by Ed Emberley – colorful step-by-step drawings using your fingerprints!
• PBS Kids Fingerprints – Participate in a live international science experiment

After our fingerprinting fun and a good hand-wash, we read a book appropriate for Satori’s age on genetics.

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas by Cheryl Bardoe is an excellent book to delve more deeply into this week’s lesson to learn about Gregor Mendel and his discoveries with genetics.

What a great introduction on one of the more complex science subjects we’ve tackled!

I asked Satori is she was understanding the book, and she said “I totally understand it.” So I’m glad that we have this book in our home library now.  It’s definitely one we’ll want to read again the next time we study genetics.

I remember distinctly learning about this in high school, and it was great to have this review today. Of course, the geek that I tend to be, I do have more adult books on this topic to read for myself, or when Satori is older. Here’s a list that older children might dig, they’re cartoon/graphic guides on Genetics and DNA.

The Cartoon Guide to Genetics by Larry Gonick
The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA by Mark Schultz

Amazing Schemes Within Your Genes by Frances R. Balkwill (ages 9-12)

We have been learning about the nervous system lately, so today we did the “I’m Sensible” lab for R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Life.

Two years ago when we did FIAR and rowed the Lentil book, we also did a similar activity involving the senses. I figured this would be fun to tackle it again. Laid out on our table are 10 bags, 2 of each sense. So hidden in the first two bags are a dinosaur and a mousepad. The next two are sight – an orange, and a tricky, sealed container of vinegar. The next two containers held Play-Doh and vinegar that will be identified by spell. And so on…

Here’s Satori using only her sense of touch to figure out what’s inside Bag #1. She thought it was a dragon figurine, but it really was a little Stegosaurus.

Satori also predicted her sense of sight would be most helpful in identifying the mystery objects. Like all RSO Labs, they provide a handy lab sheets to fill out. She got one wrong for all the senses except taste. The last sheet had her analyze her prediction compared to the end result of taste being the most accurate sense in her lab.

We are almost done studying the Human Body, and then it’s on to the Animal Kingdom! I have a lot of fun things lined up.

I’m joining the “Yes! We Did Science!” Friday bloggers, as an incentive for everyone to do science more. To see other homeschoolers blogging about their Science Friday, click the image below.

We actually started this on Tuesday of this week to learn about the respiratory system. Using R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey, we did a Lab Activity where we measured Satori’s breath after different activities, just like we did when we learned about the circulatory system.

We read a few books on respiration.

Satori filled out her breathing chart.

We compared it to our Circulatory Chart where we did the same activities. I now see I should’ve used the same colors, but you can see they aligned up for the most part.

Today (Friday) we did the second RSO Lab on respiration was to make a 10-foot Giant with four major parts: Nose to inhale/exhale, lungs, heart, and a foot for walking.

David was the Giant who inhaled and exhaled. Satori acted as a little red blood cell. She moved the red counters (oxygen) around, through the nose as Daddy inhaled, down the trachea, to the lung, to the heart, down to the foot, dropped off the red blood cell, picked up a blue disc (carbon dioxide), went back up to the heart, and to the lungs. Then the Giant exhaled, so the blue carbon dioxide went up the trachea tube, and out the nose. We did this cycle five times, so Satori got a great workout!

That was just a warmup!

Earlier today I ran across a free download on Ellen McHenry’s Basement Workshop page called the Circulation Game. The target age group is 8-14, but I knew Satori and our whole family would have fun with it. It took maybe an hour to print off on cardstock, tape the back together, color it with markers, make the spinner, and all the other little game pieces. Here it is all finished and on the floor! (You can click the image to see it larger.)

It combines many body systems – circulatory, respiration, digestive and even skeletal systems, and demonstrates how they all work together. Here is the game setup before we started, the Sugar & Protein (food) is in the intestines, and CO2 and waste are in the hands, feet, and head.

Satori and David were Team Orange and I was Team Green. Satori took a spin on our spinner. This was printed on cardstock, colored, laminated, and the arrow was fastened with a brad. It spun perfectly!

The number you land on specifies a move through the circulatory system, and with a 20 you can get pretty far. To generate your red blood cells, you start from your femur bone, as your bone marrow produces blood cells. From there, your red blood cell marker can go up to the lungs to pick up oxygen (O2), then off to either the feet/hands/head to drop off oxygen and pick up CO2, and then back to the lungs to drop off the CO2. You could also select a Sugar&Protein to travel to the feet/hands/head, drop off, pick up Waste, and then travel all the way to the Kidneys. All this time, you have to follow the arrows through your arteries and veins, making a fun twist through the heart’s aorta artery and Vena Cava vein.

The game was amazingly fun for the family! David and Satori won, by just a little. They got all the oxygen and food to the right places, and all the CO2 and Waste to the right places first. Here is how the game looked once we were all done.

Our RSO science lab this week was to make blood! Ask someone what blood looks like, and they’ll probably say a red liquid. But blood is made of different components, and this activity shows us the main components of blood. Below we have everything measured and prepared. Our light corn syrup will be our plasma (1/2 c), the red hot candy the red blood cells (1/2 c), dry lima beans the white blood cells (5 pieces), and the dry lentils as the platelets (1 T).

Red Hot Candies were very hard to find, so I settled for generic hot cinnamon candies I found in Target’s bulk candy section. Of course we had to get a few jellybeans while we were at it, we rarely eat candy, so this was kinda fun.

Pouring the Plasma!

After mixing it all up, our final blood mix! All those red blood cells are what makes our blood look so red.

Topside view.

Satori knew about blood already because she’s fascinated with the human body, but this was helpful for her to also remember what roles plasma and platelets perform in the blood. She colored and labeled this diagram.

After the activity, she also drew her own blood model, and she remembered to include all the parts.

Over the weekend the entire family did our science lessons from R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey – Life. Continuing on with our Human Body lessons, the first activity was learning about our muscles. Using the included cutouts, we made our own arm with muscles that demonstrated how muscles work. We learned that muscles shorten (contract) in order to move. Muscles don’t push your bones, they only shorten and pull.

Also included are the RSO lab sheets, where Satori wrote down the measurements. Here’s she’s using her newest pencil grip that she seems to enjoy using (so far).

We plan to combine a bunch of science labs together, so we can do them with Daddy (he needs to learn science too)! So our next lesson was about our heart. Satori and David did 5 different physical activities and then we took their heart rate. Activities ran from just sitting, walking, situps and pushups, jumping jacks, and running around the house.

We used a real stethoscope that I think I got from Lakeshore Learning for a few dollars (although I can’t find it on their website). Be careful with these things, they really work! I only let Satori use them with careful supervision and had to warn Daddy not to yell when someone had them on.

Here’s Satori’s graph she colored in of our various activities. As expected, sitting had the lowest heart rate per minute, and running had the highest. Activities that the body was mostly laying down (or that Satori didn’t do properly and only gave a half-effort), were not as high as jumping jacks that used the arms.

This is what happens when I left Satori alone to do her science lesson to pack for our trip.

It all started off proper enough…

But I came back to this skeleton who thinks he can dance! Satori always makes me laugh, I don’t know how she thinks of these things.

At least she did everything I told her to do though.

Satori begged to do another science lesson again today, so I figured this one would be a fun Sunday project. This is still from the second lesson “The Cell”. I prepared lemon jello and poured it into two different dishes – one round and one square. After an hour in the fridge, just enough to get them set a bit, I had Daddy re-read the lesson story while I prepared some fruit.

We held our breath when Daddy asked Satori which jello dish might be the plant cell. And she responded correctly, of course the square dish! The circular dish will be the animal cell.

We cut some green grapes in half to represent football-shaped chloroplasts and Satori slipped them into the cell membrane and into the cell.

Each cell got a big strawberry nucleus. Then we labeled the cell parts. Of course our animal cell didn’t get any chloroplasts. These are very simple cells and we could have made them a bit more intricate, but this sufficed for our 5 year old daughter. Besides it’s all the project called for anyway.

MMMm… don’t our cells look yummy?

Aren’t edible science projects great?

Right after this lesson, as I was uploading the photos to my computer, Satori rushed into my office and handed me this paper.

I love Science. (followed by a huge number)

We love our new science program R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey! The topics in Level One Life cover:

• What is Life?
• The Cell
• The Human Body
• Classifying Life
• Animal Kingdom
• Plant Kingdom

We just covered the human body as a unit study, so we might do some Animal Kingdom topics this summer yet. I especially think it would be great to do when we visit my parent’s Wisconsin farm, where it would be easier to find earthworms and snails.