Science Friday - Bodies and the Nervous System

Bodies the Exhibition is in town for the summer. I mentioned it to Ava and she was so excited about it that she wanted me to take her first thing this summer. I'm not kidding, the school bell rang and 20 minutes later we were walking up to the door of the exhibit. She brought her notebook and took notes as we walked through. When we got to the end and she was not ready to go so we went through it again.

I wanted to keep her excitement going so I printed some anatomy diagrams from Enchanted Learning and made the girls science notebooks. We checked out a few of the links from the Bodies web page and thought this one was a good link for basic, kid friendly info. Ava was very interested in the nervous system so I pulled out this book from my childhood and we tried a few experiments about sensation and balance found here.

We did the experiment where you touch someones back with pencils and they try to feel if you are using one pencil or two (must be less than 2 cm. apart). This was okay but the girls got real excited about the balance experiment. We talked about how we use our ears and eyes to balance and I showed them pictures of the semicircular canals in the inner ear.

This book, dated but still cool, gave a really good explanation.

Now for the fun stuff, spin your sister and see if she can walk a straight line.

We did all of this in about 10 minutes then put it away and had lunch. I don't want these lessons to be intense scientific studies but just some fun exposure to science that they might remember.

I found Ava reading the book later so I guess I should start planning next weeks science lesson.

If you have any links or fun science activities please share.