Joints and the Nervous System

After making our skeleton model, we learned about joints. We made this model. It looked like it was going to be pretty cool. Now, I'm not sure it was worth the effort.



Dysfunctional joints

 The pivot joint is suppose to show how the bones at the base of the skull work. Uh, this explains why my head spins off sometimes ( : o ).  Then, you have the ball and socket joint, as in hip, shoulder. If the pivot joint had too much movement, the ball and socket joint does not have enough. Our model only moves in two directions ( ; \ ). 

bum knee

And last, but not least, I have heard of people's knees going this direction, but it is very painful. The knee joint in our model goes forward, instead of back. Hannah pointed this out to me, and she was very disturbed by the "wrongness" of it all. Like mother, like daughter?
I believe a kinesthetic approach is better for demonstrating the movements of the joints, AND alot more fun! If you have this book, The Body Book by Donald M. Silver and Patricia J. Wynne, I recommend that you skip making this model and just let your students locate the joints on themselves and demonstrate what they can do.


Moving on. . .  We had fun with the model for the spinal cord and nerves, today. It's from the same book, so don't throw out the book, it has alot of great stuff in it. The book said to use string, but I thought it would be cooler and easier to use pipe cleaners (bright yellow!). We just made one model together, since I had to cut out the paper vertabrae. You can see how the spinal cord runs through it (at least a simplified version).

needs an adjustment, Ha, Ha

Successful project = Happy student