Chalk: The Human Body

This week Junior J wanted our blackboard topic to be about the human body. So we got the hubs to stand at the wall and outlined him so that our model would be "life-sized". And then we added various organs in. I helped Junior J with drawing some of the organs, and he tried drawing some with reference to diagrams in biology texts. He did all the labelling (of course I helped with the spelling bit), and even added the little section on how food gets digested and gets smaller and smaller as it moves along the gut.

I'm quite surprised at how much he's learnt so far about this topic. He mainly gets his information from a Magic School Bus book on the topic, as well as from watching the Magic School Bus shows (which I highly recommend for learning science). We also read "Inside Your Outside", and I realize he probably picked up some of his information from our casual everyday conversations. 

He's been quite fascinated about the topic, so most of what was on the board was stuff he already knew (you can see his drawing of Lil J's digestive system here). However, he learnt a few new terms in the process of doing up the board: alveoli (he referred to them as air sacs previously), as well as faeces (I remember my students used to misspell this all the time as "faces"!). 

These days, working on the blackboard has become a family affair, where baby is watching in his chair, while Lil J sometimes helps. This round, he added the "poop" (and had a field day drawing it as you can see!). 

PS: This is the third topic we've done up on the blackboard, and we'll be updating the board with a new topic almost every week. You can see all our blackboard drawings here.