My Body Brownie Scout Badge

This badge works great with our human body theme for school.

We started off by watching The Magic School Bus Human Body DVD. There were three episodes on it.

Body Parts

We used the white side of a spare roll of wrapping paper. I outlined Shayla's body. She colored it and added features.

Brain Power

We read Think, Think, Think Learning About Your Brain by Pamela Hill Nettleton. Shayla put the paper brain from the My Body book in her outline.

Then we did several activities:

Brain training. While writing your name, move one of your feet in a circle on the floor - at the same time! It's harder than it sounds.

Brain messages. Drop a slip of paper and try to catch it before it hits the floor. Your eyes send messages to your brain, and then tells your hands to catch it. It all happens quickly, but sometimes not fast enough. It takes some practice.

The Brain Never Sleeps. The brain is even awake when we're asleep. We discussed dreams. What they are and talked about dreams we have dreamt.

Fingerprints

We had fun taking each others fingerprints and talking about how they were different. We looked at the different types of fingerprints here.

Then the fun stuff, we made pictures with our fingerprints using Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Book.

Reflexes

We had fun doing the knee jerk on each other. Ok, Shayla had fun, I had a pain in the knee the rest of the day.

We tried to pick each other up while the other tightened up their arm muscles.

Pulse

We played doctor and took each other's pulse and used the stethoscope. This is nothing new for Shayla. When we were discovering her allergy triggers we used to use the pulse/stethoscope method to identify triggers. The heart beats faster when you come in contact with a trigger. It sounds crazy, but it's true.

A Fit Body - Exercise is Good

We talked about the job of muscles. We've been talking about muscles alot, because even though my healthy child appears to be physically fit, she is lacking muscle tone. It affects her large and fine motor skills. That's one reason we are spending so much emphasis on outside play - while we can!

We did the following exercises together. Most of them she knew, but some I had to model for her.

• Jumping jacks



• marching



• skipping



• side leg raises



• hopping



• sit ups



• push ups



• pull ups



• twisting from the waist



• somersaults