Amazing human body.

Ivana has been asking questions about how our body works for some time already. And it became more and more challenging to answer them since she wasn't satisfied with the answers we were giving her. So we visited "Body Wars" exhibition at the Newark Museum and then gave her a book "Uncover the human body" for Christmas, so we can learn together.

We've read that book a couple of times and it's a very visual one. As you turn the pages it gives a three-dimentional look inside the human body. It's a book and a model, you turn each page and uncover a new layer of understanding. It's recommended for ages 8 and up, but she seems to enjoy it. And then at the library she spotted "The Magic School Bus. Inside the human body" by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen. Then we borrowed another book from thew same series that explores the senses.

As an expansion activity we traced the page from the book and Ivana colored all the organs. She just loved doing it and insisted on sending one "picture" as a get better note to her best friend who was sick. It's so funny to hear her talk about the red and white blood cells, plasma, blood cerculation and food digestion. She asks me to bend down so she can see my spine, or looks at Leona's hands trying to see her veins. She comments on the food going down the esophagus, then to the stomach, small and large intestines evry time we are having a meal. Mirek had a cut on his finger and she comforted him by saying that platelet cells would make it heal soon. Then she asked...
"Mommy, lets play a game."
"OK. What game?"
"I'll be the oxygen and you'll be carbon dioxide!"
"Hmmmm... how do you play that?"

Well, Ivana could not come up with the rules and neither could I. So Mirek was very helpful and suggested a different game. He was a white blood cell, Leona was a virus and Ivana was a bacteria. He was chasing them around, of course skipping the white blood cell's "function to destroy" the desease germs.

Today we had another round of tracing and coloring the human body. Leona demanded to do one of her own. "Me too deebee dodee!"(human body in her language). And this time Ivana was especially interested in the heart and asked me if her heart was ever gonna stop working.

Well... I guess we'll leave that until she is a little bit older.