Science Sunday: Hands on Muscle lesson

 

In addition to learning about muscles through exercise, we also explored what muscles look like.  We’ve looked at joints and how they work (which apparently I need to track down and post that one…..).

Now to look at the actual muscle tissue.  We’ve explored chicken muscles before, but they don’t clearly show the muscle cell bundles, but steak, that works pretty darn well, and after you have a nice dinner.  Flank steak would have worked better, but they didn’t have it at the store at the time.

 

Supplies needed for a hands on muscle lesson:

Steak (I bought some thin cut sirloin, but flank steak works best), magnifying glass, paper, pencil, and colored pencil, soap and water

 

Procedure for a hands on muscle lesson:

The first step in any observation is using your sense.  So we drew and wrote about what we saw, how it felt, what we smelled.

The kids all agreed it felt weird to touch.  This of course led to a short lesson on washing hands after handling raw meat.  Always a good point to reinforce with kids.

 

Next we broke out our magnifying glass, I’d give you a recommendation on one, but sadly this one is out of production.  I’ve had it and used it for 10 years, and now it’s no more.  Waaaaahhhhhh.

After observing both ways, here’s what we came up with.

All in all the kids declared this to be a great hands on muscle lesson.  “And Mommy, now I want some steak.”  Well child, that would be why we only used a small part of the steak, so the rest could be used for dinner.

For more hands on  muscle lessons:

Learning about muscles through exercise

Experimenting with flexibility

How do muscles work?

Learning about muscles

 

Or follow my Anatomy pinterest board

 

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

 

Over at the Homeschool Scientist she shared the science of helium balloons, an easy science lesson after most birthday parties.

 

Angellic Scalliwags shared more on her pond study, including a great resource for identifying ducks.

 

 

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Now link up your SCIENCE posts for the week, and then visit some of the other posts linked up and say hi. I’m going to be pinning, commenting, FBing or tweeting all of the posts linked up as the week goes by.