Learning about DNA with friends... (our 1st A&P group class)

A while back some friends and I talked about doing a class as a small group ~ we talked about history or something science related and came to settle on HUMAN ANATOMY... we chose to use the "Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology" book and journal series...

As individual families, we take 2 weeks to cover each lesson and then we are meeting biweekly to share a lesson and activity...

Today was our first group meeting and it went really well.

  

We started out the class with a discussion on cell division and used made a "model of a cell" activity from Janice Van Cleave's book "The Human Body for Every Kid"

  In this activity we used jello and grapes to create a simple cell with a snack-size bag representing the cell membrane, jello being the cytoplasm, and the grape being the nucleus.

                          

Then we made edible DNA using Twizzlers, toothpicks, and colored marshmallows. We discussed the different letters associated with nucleotides and what they each meant (T, C, G, A,)

  

working on the DNA strand

     

 the finished product..."A DOUBLE HELIX"

We read an article from  "The History News: Medicine" and talked about Vesalius and how he went about disproving some of Galen's theories  (that had been believed as truth for over 1400 years) by actually dissecting cadavers. Galen had only been able to dissect pigs, oxen, and monkeys ~ it was against Ancient Greek law to use cadavers...

 

We looked at cell permeability by taking a colander and pouring dreid beans and salt through it showing that a cell membrane will only allow like sized things to pass through it's pores ~ thus the "SEMIPERMEABLE MEMBRANE" theory...

My favorite part of our class was watching a great movie on the human body from Netflix called  "Eyewitness The Human Machine" .... You can see a clip of it here.

I think I enjoyed this class and learned as much as the kids did... I can honestly say that this is a science class that has my kids and me wanting to learn more... we love it!!