Human Body: Brain and Nervous System

This week, we have been learning about the brain and nervous system.

If you missed the other parts of our Human Body Study, you can see them here: Human Body – Doctor’s Bag, Human Body ~ Body Parts, Human Body: Bones, Joints and Muscles, Senses, Cells, Heart, Blood and Circulation, Digestive System and Nutrition, the Brain and Nervous System, the Skin, Hair and Nails, the Immune System and Germs, the Respiratory System, the Excretory System, Reproduction System and Dental.

First, we made the paper Brain Hemisphere Hats from Ellen J McHenry.

I had also purchased a Human Body Brain kit and we dissected a couple of lamb’s brains ready for this weeks activities, so be prepared for the dissecting photos below.

At first, the boys didn’t really want to even see a lamb’s brain, but once they were brought home from the butcher’s they started getting more curious. When we purchased them, they were frozen, so I put them on the sink to defrost. As time went by, they started checking on them more and more an then started to touch them. Eventually, they were defrosted enough for us to start dissecting.

It took them a little bit to work up to it, but once they had pulled a couple of brains out of the container, they got right into it, putting to the parts and naming them and cutting them in half and then into smaller pieces.

Above is a labelled picture of one of the lamb brains that we used.

Then we put together this brain kit and read all about how the brain works.

Then we did a brain experiment. We talked about how the brain sits inside the skull and how it floats in cerebrospinal fluid. To show what would happen if this fluid wasn’t there, we did this experiment with eggs.

What you need:

* clear container (this represents the skull)

* 2 eggs (they represent the brain)

* water (this represents the cerebrospinal fluid)

What to do:

Put one egg into your clear container. This represents the brain (egg) in your skull (container) with no fluid.

Shake the container as hard as you can. What happens to the eggs? 

Clean out the container and add the other egg and enough water so that the egg is covered the best you can.

Now shake the container. The egg should remain intact.

The first egg broke because there was no water (fluid) looking after it. This is why our brains have cerebrospinal fluid, to help look after and protect our brain against hard knocks.

We also made a model of a brain out of play dough.

 Then we added the labels to the model brain.

We used the labelling of the play dough brain model as sort of a game.

The winner was the person who could label the brain correctly in the shortest amount of time.

We also made a model of a neuron, you can find the instructions at Adventures in Mommydom.

We also used this foam puzzle to learn about the skull which houses the brain.

 You can download your pack by clicking the link below:

You can check out more activities on my Human Body Pinterest Board:

Follow Stacey Jones (A Moment In Our World)’s board Science – Human Body on Pinterest.