The head bone's connected to the foot bone...

Yesterday, as part of our ongoing discussion of systems in science class, we looked at a skeleton. More specifically, I gave each pair of kids in my class a skeleton puzzle to put together. There were about 20 pieces, some depicting more than one bone, and the kids had to use brads to connect the pieces through holes.

My kids have some VERY interesting ideas about their bodily structure.

I saw one group immediately trying to fasten the pelvis to the base of the skull.

Every group in my afternoon class thought that the arm only had one bone, so they had the hand approximately where the elbow should be.

The lumbar vertebra piece, which is supposed to go between the rib cage and the pelvis, was instead placed by one group on the UNDERSIDE of the pelvis. Um, that's a different bone, fellas!!

Today was actually a fantastic teaching day. I thought it would be awful, because the curriculum called for us to teach rounding to the nearest 10 and nearest 100. Normally, this is a pretty difficult concept for the kids to grasp in a week, and our guides gave us one day to teach it.

So I used the "punch it up" method to teach it to the kids. And lo and behold, they got it, they really got it! My low low kids who can barely subtract, they were rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100!

Will they retain it? Who knows. But at least they got the concept and can probably be reminded how to do it in the future.