February Nature Seekers 4 H Meeting

January flew by so fast I did not find time to get a meeting in. I was trying to get it done earlier in the month then usual and schedule it before the public school's mid winter break, which left our only available date as Monday, giving me exactly an hour to do a meeting.  We only ended up with 7 children attending, which I think is my lowest attendance ever.  Two of my children weren't even there.  Christian was running fever, so Nick stayed home to babysit until Art could get home from work.

For our topic this month, I chose heart.  We talked about two different aspects of heart.  First we talked about what it means to us in 4 H as one of the 4 h's.  Then we talked about the actual physical heart.  We talked about where it is and what it does.  I read some fun and interesting heart facts.  We also talked about what we need to do to keep our hearts healthy.

Since one of the things you need to do to keep your heart healthy is exercise, we did a little yoga.

Then we did a science experiment with candy hearts, alka seltzer, and water.  The hearts were supposed to dance.  It did not turn out as well as I thought it would.  One of the pink hearts kind of danced but the others did not.

Our last activity was to make an edible model of the heart.  I actually got this idea out of our science book, Apologia's Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology.  To make the heart we used graham crackers, marshmallows, mini marshmallows, tooth picks, and red and blue icing.

We iced two graham crackers  and 4 marshmallows with blue icing. The graham crackers represented the right atrium and right ventricle and the marshmallows the superior and inferior vena cava and the pulmonary artery.  We iced 2 graham crackers, 2 marshmallows, and 12 mini marshmallows threaded onto 4 toothpicks.  The graham crackers represented the left atrium and left ventricle, the big marshmallows the ascending aorta, and pulmonary veins.

It was a little messy!

I also gave them all a coloring page of the heart to take home.