Blood and Guts – Kidney Dissection

One of the (many!) things my classroom o’ homeschooled kids looks forward to is dissection day!  Yes, it’s gross.  Yes, it smells.  Yes, it feels pretty dang nasty, but just as soon as we’re done with one, someone invariably asks, “When’s our next dissection, Mrs. Darby???”  It brings tears of pride to my eyes.

This is our kidney dissection.  We used cow kidneys, and they stink of urine and blood REALLY heavily.  You could taste it!  Yes, I just went there…  Also, they are VERY hard to slice vertically.  Kidneys are TOUGH!  If I revisit this class, I’ll have the butcher slice them in half for me.

Aside from showing their parents that we do this cool stuff in class, AND that these pictures are great record-keepers of the fact that we DO school with our homeschool kids, I get all these pictures printed up, and they put them in their lapbooks, so if they ever go back and show someone what they did in school, they’ll have a way to recapture those memories.  🙂

These particular pictures will go in their Renal System section.

Anyway, here are the action shots!

 

 

Art – Birch Trees in Fall

My older group enjoyed this project.  There were a lot of elements that they hadn’t tried yet, such as masking and using a gift card to make the bark.  They really love water coloring, too!

I like how this student split her trunks.

 

Here are more from the class:

Blood and Guts – Lapbook, Lesson 4B

A.K.A. the Renal System.

Because Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology attaches the renal system to the end of the digestive system in Lesson 4, there isn’t much on it.  We didn’t spend too much time on it, but I wanted it to be a separate part in our Monster Lapbooks, because I feel it should be its own section.

The models came from Scholastic’s The Body Book, by Donald M. Silver and Patricia J. Wynne.  It’s not shown, but the students used a black marker to label the renal system.

The foldable came from Knowledge Box Central.

I put together the pictures because the kids were fascinated with kidney stones.  You can download them here:  L4B – Renal System – pictures

The only thing left to add will be the pictures of our kidney dissection!

Here are the pictures of our renal system lapbook section.  It’ll be glued right next to the digestive system.

Here is the layout for our renal system. The urine color card flips up.

 

Here, the urine color card is up, so you can see the renal system model.

 

Lapbook:  Lesson 1 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 2 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 3 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 4 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 6 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lessons 7 and 8 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 9 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 10 can be found here.

Lapbook:  Lesson 11 can be found here.

 

Art – Embossed Leaves

This was a new project of which I hadn’t tried, so it was definitely a learning curve for my high school art students.  Most of them seemed to like the project when it was completed, but there were a few that voiced their contempt for it as well.  Personally, I thought it was a good way to stretch their brains regarding art.  We dealt with embossing, burnishing, and creating textured backgrounds. 

The girls got frustrated when their perceived ideas of what the embossed leaves should look like didn’t exactly turn out to be as such.  Then, they discovered pitfalls with their backgrounds.  One of the girls decided to use tissue paper, and after she painted the tissue on to the board with red paint, she thought it turned out looking like flesh, which is kinda gross.  Ha!  She thought that spray painting the edges black would get rid of that look as well as match it better with the leaves, and that just made it look evil.  Ha! Again!  I tried to help her by spraying a little silver on the edges to “holy” it up again, BUT she thought it was ugly.  In the end, I think it was one of the best ones made.

Here is the “evil” background in progress. See the flesh? Haha!

 

Here is the finished project. I think it looks great with all the elements and textures!

 

Art – Perspective with Scarecrows

This was a cool project insofar that we didn’t use watercolors.  Instead we used water based markers to achieve the color effect.

This is a great lesson to focus on vanishing points and near vs. far perspective, though the kids thought the scarecrows looked a bit creepy so up-close.  Ha!  Because of that, some of them even purposefully made their scarecrows more like “scary-crows.”  I have the best kids.  🙂

This project was a bit challenging to teach, because I had to constantly remind the kids to think of each area as a “shape” when they were outlining it with the marker because that’s where the color was pulled from when the water was added.  That was a hard concept for them to get.  HOWEVER, if we ever use this marker/watercolor technique again, they’ll have it down pat.

Here are the kids in the process of creating them:

They had fun adding the water.

The gang is working hard.

Gavin’s finishing up his shapes of outlined color.

Rachel’s adding water and pulling the color from the marker lines.

Abby has started adding water to her “shapes.”

 

Here are some of the “scarey-crows” and scarecrows that were made:

 

Art – Pumpkins in Perspective

One of my art classes just completed this project, and they look great for the season!  We used oil pastels for the pumpkin, starting with the color in the middle, and putting a darker color on the bottom, and a lighter color on top.  We used watercolor for the background. 

 

The way the pumpkin was positioned was so different than the average side-view.  I love this perspective!

I like this one’s broken stem.

 

Yes, the artist named this, “Yes!!!”

Thanksgiving – Rick Rolled!

Don’t worry.  I won’t actually Rickroll you, but this post IS about rolls…

Last year, my family tried something brand-spanking new at the table.  I made up some prompts and open-ended questions on a piece of paper, cut them out, wrapped them in foil, and rolled them up in our crescent rolls for Thanksgiving.  It was so much fun, we’re doing it again this year!

Here are the prompts I created.  They’re on the first sheet.  The second sheet has Thanksgiving facts, in case you have a big family – or just like to eat a lot of rolls.

Thanksgiving Bread Inserts

Here’s a picture of how you roll them up once they’ve been wrapped in foil (a lot like a gum wrapper):