Human Body - Week 7 - Teeth

Week 7: We made teeth.

Our symmetric mouths are filled with pairs of teeth. There are eight incisors, four canines, eight premolars and twelve molars in full grown adults who still have all of their teeth. After reading about teeth in The Way We Work we did some teeth activities.

First we counted our teeth and found out that both my six and nine year old had twelve teeth on the top and ten teeth on the bottom. My eleven year old had twelve on both the top and bottom. I had fourteen teeth on the top and bottom.

Next we read some stories and watched a very cute video.

One Morning in Maine is a wonderful children's story book about a little girl who loses her tooth and goes on an adventure with her father. She learns that birds do not have teeth, but dogs do and theirs fall out just like people's.

Throw Your Tooth on the Roof is about what children in different countries do when they lose their baby teeth. Some put them in boxes for a fairy, some have them plated in gold and made into jewelry and some throw them on the roof. This story is a fun way for kids to learn about other countries.

Once Upon a Time Life - Mouth and Teeth is a wonderful children's animated video. In the episode the teeth bacteria try to work their way into the blood stream by making a cavity in a tooth. They select the best spot, have a difficult time drilling through the enamel and crave sugar. I highly recommend watching.

Next, we made our own teeth. We talked about the shapes, parts and purposes of our different kinds of teeth while we made them out of dough.

Incisors are in the front and flat. Canines are used for ripping and very pointy. Molars and premolars are for crushing.

A toothpick was inserted into each tooth to make a hole for the root. The roots were spaghetti noodles.

We used nail polish to paint the hard, bright, white enamel onto our teeth. Then we gave one tooth with several cavities a crown.

Another tooth had a cavity which was filled with yellow dough.


 

To see more of our human body activities please visit our science page. There are many more human body science activities to come, but I'm going to take a break and post some other activities over the summer. This series will resume September 1st with posts on the nose, digestive system, liver, pancreas and other anatomy activities.

* I did not receive any compensation for this recommendation. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found many products that I like. If you're interested in the products I recommend on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. 
** I am an Amazon associate and receive a small portion of the sales on orders made after clicking in from this site, which I promptly spend on homeschooling books and supplies for my children.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon - Archimedes Screw

Week 8: We made an Archimedes Screw.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Built during the second Babylonian Empire, the legend says that the gardens were a gift from Nebuchadnezzar II to his wife.

There are several mysteries about this ancient wonder, but one has to do with water. One theory says that the gardens were watered using Archimedes Screws several hundred years before Archimedes, the Greek inventor of the Archimedes screw lived.

There are three different types of simple machines.

• Lever
• Inclined Plane, Screw, Wedge
• Wheel and Axle, Pulley

An Archimedes screw is a simple machine used to lift material from a low point to a high point by increasing the distance thereby lessening the steepness.

This Archimedes screw is located at the Playmobil Fun Park in Germany. Kids can spend hours moving material around in this play pit.

Our Archimedes screw was much smaller. We followed the instructions in the Walk Beside Me blog to create our Archimedes screws.

We began by cutting a hole and the end off an empty water bottle.

Then we cut six circles out of stiff paper to fit inside the water bottle.

A slot was cut in the circles and they we put onto a skewer.

Next they were taped together to form a spiral.

The spiral was stretched out and taped to the skewer to be held in place.

The screw was tested with cereal. It had to be modified several times before it worked. There were many issues.
The cereal got caught in the tape joints of the disks.
The disks were not spread out far enough.
Many disks were too small so the cereal fell back to the bottom before it could be raised to the top.

All the issues were fixed with tape and each screw successfully lifted at least one piece of cereal.

We used 1 liter bottles. I think it would have worked better with bigger bottles. This was a more challenging project than I anticipated, but very rewarding. About two and a half hours were spent reworking the screws to get them to work. This proved to be a true lesson in engineering, science, history, and patience.

To see the slides for our Mesopotamia studies please visit my awesome friend Amy's blog. I have reorganized our activities and lessons to go in a slightly different order than we actually studied them. For that reason my lesson numbers don't completely agree with Amy's who has taught me so much about history. To see our other history activities please visit our history page.

Leukemia - The Catheter is Out

In part last night's Lotto Event felt like a celebration for this morning's surgery. Today Jemma reached a huge milestone in her treatment when she had her catheter removed.

Although it was considered minor surgery there were still risks, and a parent's worry is ever present when their child is in an operating room. The surgery went well.

Here's the first picture of Jemma without a catheter.

She was hugging a tiny hedgehog as she lay in the recovery room.

I have no doubt that when Jemma is an adult this day will be one of her earliest memories. She was so excited for today and has been talking about it for months. She wants to go swimming and she wants to be normal again! After we returned home she asked if she could try on her swimsuits as soon as her pain from the operation went away.

Community Support - Thank You

Unbelievable, overwhelming, and incredible are some of the words that come to mind when I think of the Lotto Elf event which took place last night to benefit Jemma. Honestly, I don't feel like thank you begins to express the appreciation my family and I have. The event raised over 13,000 euros.

Never in my life have I experienced anything close to this amazing amount of community support. So many people gave both their time and money to make this event a success. Our local sports club initiated and organized the match with Lotto Elf. Siegbert and Peter spent much of their free time organizing. Volunteers hung signs, directed traffic, sold food and drinks, and spent weeks preparing the pitch. The pictures below only show a small fraction of the work that went into it.

The kindergarten Jemma attended until the day she was hospitalized did a pregame performance. They donned sunglasses and matching shirts as they sang and danced around the field. In addition, many of the families baked cupcakes and cakes to sell during the game.

'Oh Mickey' was the song the carnival club kids danced to. Carnival always starts at 11:11 on November 11. They love number patterns. I was speechless when they presented us with a large check for a number pattern amount.

Two weeks ago Billi, a friend from the carnival club, knocked on our door. In addition to selling schnapps at his house and numerous summer festivals he has a large crank-up music box on wheels that he plays. He wanted a photo of Jemma to attach to the music box in conjunction with collecting donations for her at his next festival.

Football (or soccer to most Americans) was the key to the success of the event. Little kids and their parents both had the chance to meet and play with idolized former national and professional players.

My friend described it best when she said "these men are beautiful." They were fun to watch and both the Lotto and local team put a lot of effort into the event.

I regret that I didn't take more pictures.

We have enjoyed the Musikverein at many local events. Here in our village, there is a music club. The band plays at many community events such as the Christmas Tree Lighting and Christmas Market, church holidays, and annual Kerwe Festival. It was an honor to hear them last night and to receive an incredible donation.

Members from both the Protestant and Catholic Churches in our village have been supportive. Their thoughts and prayers have been with Jemma from the start. The pastor presented us with a collection from church members last night, and as homeschooling is illegal in Germany, it was interesting for me to hear his comments on my blog.

The mayor of our village, as well as the mayor of Ramstein, were both in attendance along with financial support.

Numerous businesses sent donations; Sparda Bank, Pro Alpha, Statwerk Ramstein, Dominion Systems and Fit 'n Fun Fitness Studio among others. Several of my friends are members of the Fitness Studio. A few weeks ago they had a coffee and cake brunch for Jemma and then decided to donate 10 euros for every Facebook like they received for Jemma up to 1000 euros. It didn't take long to reach 1000.

Childhood cancer is a terrible thing. Cancer is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, it has touched many of our lives. This year has been not only difficult for Jemma, but for the entire family as well. Her body has been through many changes. Steroids and chemotherapy drugs have side effects. Logistically cancer is difficult to deal with because there are so many hospital visits, while normal family needs still exist. Emotionally it is a whirlwind of normal moments and constant worry.

To everyone who came out last night and who has helped us along the way we appreciate it. I just feel like I can't say thank you enough.

Hobbies and Handicrafts - May 17

My oldest finished her school work for the year and started crafting and doing other hobbies full time. She is so happy to be on break. My son has about three weeks left and then he will join her, but his hobbies are much different. Metal detecting and growing plants currently fills his free time. Not surprisingly, my six year old daughter is following in the footsteps of her older sister. I love summer!

Have you ever bound your own book? This is something I've been curious about and was delighted to read the full tutorial Anna-Marie at Life's Adventures posted. Check it out. It's a great summer reading and writing activity.

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What have your kids been up to this week?

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Lesson Planning - Lessons Learned

Lesson Planning can be a fun and time consuming task for educators. Welcome to Lessons Learned; the first link-up in this planning series. Each year I change things up a bit and try some new ideas in our classroom. Some work and some don't. Here are three things that worked well this year.

• Wizard of Oz - Did you know there are over 15 Wizard of Oz stories. We downloaded them from Librivox to the iPad and the kids listened to them all. They sparked imagination, inspired creativity and greatly increased my children's vocabulary.

• We used Google Sketch-up and Scratch to develop engineering skills. The kids learned a lot and were able to work very independently with the projects.

• Our Cell Science Unit Study has been an awesome learning experience. The hands-on projects have made science come to life and easy to understand.

Before summer arrives I would love to hear about the successes in your class room. Just grab the button below and link-up.

The week after the 4th of July, each Thursday there will be link-ups for sharing upcoming lesson plans. I would love to hear about new curriculum, resources and method ideas. Here's the Schedule. Please come back in a few weeks to share your subject-based plans for next year.

Please share this link with friends and other bloggers. The more people we have link-up, the easier it should be for us to find resources. Sometimes it's easy, but some subjects seem to be more of a challenge. Science and writing come to my mind. I would love for you to join me on this helpful planning series.

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This post is linked to:
The Chicken Chick

Group Drawing Project

We did this fun group drawing project while staying in the hospital. It was simple and great for a group of different ages.

First several strong sheets of white paper, one per person, were taped together to form a rectangle.

Next each person drew a wavy line from the large black dot in the center to a point near them using a black marker. Then the paper was rotated, and one of the newly created sections was allocated to each person. In that section each person had to draw a mouth. Then the paper was rotated and everyone got a new section. This time each person had to draw an eye. The process was continued. While rotating the paper section by section we drew a mouth, an eye, a snake, a smiley face and a background pattern.

After the black background design was completed each person was assigned one piece of paper to color with oil pastels.

The finished project was a large brightly colored mural. This was a fun project which could be easily done at a birthday party, baby shower, as a get well gift for a friend or a gift for a special teacher.