Adding The Great Barrier Reef to our Australia Box

As we dove deeper into our Australia unit I realized that we should probably cover The Great Barrier Reef while we're here (pun intended).  I picked up a Coral Reef Toob at Michaels ($5 with 50% off coupon), printed out some photos of real life Barrier Reef fish from The Helpful Garden for a matching exercise and took a look through our book collection. There are almost no kid-friendly Barrier Reef Books at our library but I did manage to find The Magic School Bus Takes a Dive (about the coral reef) in our collection. 

I also realized that we already own the best Great Barrier Reef resource of all: Finding Nemo! 

Mr. B had an absolute blast learning the names of the fish in the Toob (he recognized Nemo and Dory right away) and was very excited to match his toys to the sea creatures introduced in the movie. I also added a few more sea creatures from our collection (i.e. sea turtle, sharks, dolphins, etc). 

This may be his favorite unit ever! He has been carrying a basket full of the Toob fish with him everywhere and plays with them all the time. 

I also found a fun idea on Creekside Learning involving turning a water table into the Great Barrier Reef. I think that we are definitely going to try this next time we cover Australia again. 

Human Body Unit

It's time to add a new unit to our study. Since Halloween (our favorite holiday) is coming up, this is a great time for a human body unit. Mr. B loves skeletons and has a good grasp of the basics. We've been working on putting together a model skeleton and a life size foam skeleton but it's time to take it to the next level. I'm going all out with this unit. 

Our Manipulatives

Today I purchased the skeleton which we can also use as a decoration for Halloween (this guy was on sale at Michaels for $8 after 50% off). Also, last month I ran into a brand new Human Torso which I scored for $2.50. I'm going to wrap this up and present it to Mr. B as an early birthday present tomorrow. Finally, the model skeleton and the foam puzzle are tools we've been working with for several months. 

Hopefully I can get him really excited about this unit! 

Our Books 

I have gathered a large collection of books about the human body and the senses (and these are just the age appropriate ones). Alive is Mr. B's all time favorite book. He's been obsessed with it since before he could talk. 

I also ordered a few additional books from the library: 

• A Drop of Blood by Paul Showers
• Bones by Stephen Krensky
• Human Body by Kathleen Zoehfeld 

I also ordered Usborne's See Inside Your Body by Katie Daynes and Colin King from Amazon. It should arrive tomorrow (this is another early birthday present). 

Projects

I just finished putting together this skeleton puzzle from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I printed out the organs, laminated the pieces and attached sticky Velcro tape to the pieces so that Mr. B can practice putting the bones and organs together on the foam board. 

Our other project will be to trace Mr. B's body on to a long sheet of butcher paper and glue life sized organs to the picture. We'll get to this later.

The Reveal: 

I presented Mr. B with the large plastic skeleton/Halloween decoration first and he instantly fell in love with it. He insisted on taking the skeleton everywhere with him and designated it his new best friend. We read The Magic School Bus Fixes a Bone and Mr. B was really excited that he had a skeleton just like the class had in the book.

I also gave Mr. B the human torso and he spent most of the day taking out the organs and putting them back. 

He was not as excited about the Velcro skeleton. I also tried to read "Inside Your Outside! (Cat in the Hat) but Mr. B lost interest half way through. 

Today was actually a pretty difficult day and not a successful homeschooling experience. Hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow (Library Day!).