Homeschool Biology: Let's Learn Neuroanatomy!

Neuroanatomy hit the requirements for a goodly portion of the kids' studies this past year.

Will needed it for AP Psychology. Syd needed it for Honors Biology. And just for funsies, I found a Healthy Brain Initiative Girl Scout fun patch that also included it!

Obviously, you can learn neuroanatomy simply by memorizing diagrams of the brain, spinal cord, and a neuron, but that's not super fun, now is it?!?

You know what IS super fun?

Making this wearable brain diagram, that's what!

The kids made both English and French-language versions--

--and tried to make one for Luna, as well, but alas, her brain is a different size...

To memorize the parts of the neuron, I had the kids create their own models using their own ideas, although they were allowed to do some research for inspiration. Even teenagers are obsessed with Pinterest! You can see Syd's Model Magic neuron above. Will's beaded neuron was equally impressive, but she built it on a table top and didn't realize that it didn't have any structural integrity until she picked it up and it collapsed into one long, beaded string.

It's a beautiful necklace, though!

So that the kids would have a diagram that they could study, I photocopied some of the pages from this awesome book--



--and had the kids color them and use them as their reference for memorization.

I also like to have the kids get their hands on real artifacts whenever I can, not just models, so although Syd objected and spirited herself away to a friend's house during this activity, Will was happily on board with learning how to dissect a sheep's brain with me.

It's a VERY good lesson in how complicated things are in real life, even when they look pretty simple in a color-by-number diagram!

That was enough neuroanatomy for all of our purposes at the time, but since this topic is one that we do spiral back around to regularly, I've got quite a big list of other games, activities, and other enrichment projects to enhance this study. Here's some of them!

• Crochet Pattern. Learning to crochet is absolutely on my to-do list, primarily so I can make lots of nerdy little projects like this one!
• DIY Model. This assignment is similar to the one that I assigned the kids for their neuron model--you just have to tell them the parts that must be illustrated and labeled, and let them go off to be as creative as they like!
• Ectomy. For those who love the brain hat as much as we do, The Basement Workshop also has a game to reinforce memorization of the lobes of the human brain.
• Fondant Brain. You know how much we love to turn everything into a cake or a giant cookie! One day, we'll bake ourselves one of those and decorate it with a fondant human brain. 
• Functional Neuroanatomy. This interactive site from the University of British Columbia is as detailed as you could ever possibly need. You can watch videos, look at models, and teach yourself a LOT of brain anatomy!
• Mold. We've got a plastic brain mold very similar to this one, which we use for Halloween baking--because of course! However, it's on my to-do list to one day use plaster of Paris, or perhaps my dream material--concrete!
• Quilled Neuron. Syd and I have done quilling before, and we thought it was really fun. I'm feeling like a quilled neuron is not beyond our skill set!

By the time you finish all of those projects, you're going to know your neuroanatomy really, really, REALLY well!

P.S. Want to follow along with our handmade homeschool and afterschool adventures? I post lots of resources, projects, and photos of our adventures over on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool Science: Dissect a Sheep Brain

Here's a photograph of Jones snuggling me on a Sunday:



Stop reading here if you don't want to see photos of my teenager dissecting a sheep brain at our kitchen table.

Chapter 2 of Will's AP Psychology text, Myers' Psychology, is all about the biology of the mind. I'll share more of what both kids did as part of our entire biology of the mind study, but only Will chose to dissect a sheep brain.

For resources, we used this book, which has an appendix covering the dissection of a sheep brain--



--and this video that we watched three times, once the first time Will studied the biology of the mind chapter, once right before the dissection, and once during the dissection, pausing as often as we needed for Will to follow along:



We didn't find this next video nearly as helpful overall, as it goes REALLY fast, but it was helpful to see how to remove the dura mater, as the previous video starts with it already snipped away:



Here's Will attempting to snip through her own sheep's dura mater:

The cerebrum is a little easier to expose--

--but the cerebellum is quite tough to expose, so she left it covered while she worked on identifying the parts of the cerebrum. Sheep don't have a large frontal lobe--I guess they don't do a lot of planning?

Between these two photos you should be able to identify the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes, as well as easily see the gyri and sulci and the longitudinal fissure:

Okay, time to expose the cerebellum and cut the brain in half! Will cut the cerebrum down the longitudinal fissure, but the cerebellum doesn't have the fissure, so she just had to carefully slice it in half:

She's cut through the corpus callosum, so the sheep should be seizure-free now... if, you know, it had survived:

Some of the ventricles are harder to identify, but you can use the corpus callosum to help you identify the lateral ventricle. It was interesting to me how much of the visual identification of these parts relies on very minute color, texture, or physical changes. That's something that you might not think about if you only look at diagrams of the brain with everything color-coded like a map!

With the brain cut in half, Will was able to identify the superior and inferior colliculi, the pineal and pituitary glands, and the midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata on the brain stem.

The nerves were harder to find, especially as Will had accidentally removed the optic chiasm with the dura mater (oops!), but you can't miss the olfactory bulbs!

To get really familiar with the parts of the brain, one really ought to dissect lots of brains, and lots of different types of brains. This singular dissection, however, suits both Will's needs for AP Psychology and our kitchen table venue. Interestingly, there's not an AP Anatomy and Physiology exam offered, so I doubt that Will's dissection needs will expand much beyond the singular organ or very small animal (the kitchen table has already handled a shark dissection, after all!).

If she wants to study more advanced life sciences, however, particularly anatomy and physiology, our local university has a program that allows successful high school applicants admission to their lower-level classes. I'm sure there's some grad student somewhere who would just LOVE to teach Will and a whole lab of her +2 peers alllllll about how to dissect all of the things!

Will and I both found video demonstrations to be MUCH more helpful than a written walk-through, but if you're looking for even more resources, there are some written descriptions here:

• anatomy and physiology dissection. This guide IS geared to an anatomy and physiology class, so has several more parts to identify than the most basic dissection guides. If you're going through the time, expense, and trouble of a sheep brain dissection, you might as well get the most out of it!
• dissection lab manual. The photos here are very good--much better than that dissection manual I checked out of the library, humph!
• multi-grade sheep dissection. Here are some activities to guide much younger students through a sheep brain dissection. 

DIY Rorschach-Style Ink Blots

The older kid recently studied the Rorschach test as part of her AP Psychology curriculum, and revealed to me that it's not actually WHAT you identify in the ink blot that is analyzed, but HOW you come to that identification. Apparently, psychologists are more interested in your thought process, perceptions, decision making, and communication than whether or not you think everything is a guitar or two dogs playing poker or whatever.

Which is all really cool, but while Will was telling me all this, I was mostly thinking, "OOH, we should make ink blots again!"

The younger kid went through a major symmetry obsession back when she was five or six, so in those days we spent a LOT of time making ink blots together.


It's only fitting, then, that I dug out the remainder of those seven-year-old BioColor paints on a recent lovely afternoon so that the kids and I could revisit this long-ago beloved craft.

Can you believe that Syd didn't even remember that we'd done this before?!? How the passage of time can fade the memories of that which we once loved...

In order to avoid having that crease in the middle of the prints, we tried out a different technique this time. I'll once again let Syd demonstrate:

1. Cut a piece of aluminum foil or wax paper to size, then crease vertically. Add paint.

2. Fold the foil or wax paper along the crease:

3. Open it up to reveal the symmetrical image!

4. Lay a piece of heavyweight paper on top of the paint. We used this watercolor paper:

5. Use a brayer (or rolling pin meant for play dough) to smooth the paper, making sure it has good contact with the paint:

6. Carefully lift the paper straight up and admire (or be disappointed in) your art!

It was a quite relaxing, and rather fun way to spend part of a nice afternoon!

Although honestly, I don't think that the end result of a page with no vertical crease was worth the extra time and materials involved in making the aluminum foil print first:

A traditional set of ink blots has some that are black ink on white paper, some that are red and black ink on white paper--

--and some that are multi-colored. The kids were mostly interested in making the multi-colored blots:

It would be fun to make a correct set of these and then have a go at analyzing each other!

If you're interested in Rorschach and his ink blot test, here are a couple of other resources:





Surprisingly, there aren't many good ones, and no living books for children, although if you were super into it, you could definitely access the official test materials to play with.

And what this really tells you is that if you're an aspiring children's book author, there's plenty of room in the market to start with a picture book bio of Rorschach!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!