Another co-op class that went…okay. It’s hard to hold the attention of kids ranging in age from 2 to 15.

We talked about bones today; how they hold our shape and protect our organs. How bones are stronger than steel and harder than almost anything in our body (except our teeth enamel.) We saw x-rays of the skull, rib, and arm bones.

We saw a chicken bone that had no collagen left (and broke easily), and one that had no calcium. (The kid’s thought that one was great they kept shaking it back it forth amazed at how rubbery it was.)


We talked about what happens when you break a bone and how many bones are in our body (14 in your face, 206 in an adult body, 3 in your arms and legs.) We played a game where my helper M called out a body part and the kids had to step on the right number (once he called out underwear and everyone was looking for 0!)

We saw bone marrow in a microscope and saw a cow bone.

It grossed me out but the kids were touching the marrow and getting bloody glove prints, pulling at the periosteum and whacking the compact bone to see if they could make a dent in it.

We passed around some prairie dog bones and a bone from a deer that had calcified; we looked at these with a magnifying glass and saw all the little holes in the bone marrow. The last project was to make a model of a bone. We had white pvc pipe cut into 8-inch lengths, a yellow sponge, pipe cleaners and plastic wrap.

Grace’s bone is a little colorful in the vein department.

I should have cut the sponges longer, some kids shoved it all the way in the pipe and then we couldn’t see it (but they knew it was there and what it represented, so that’s all that matters.) I had bingo boards and bone fact cards for them to take home. Oh, and we measured almost everyone’s height and they took home a chart to put that on. Hannah also interrupted the class by needing a trip to the bathroom to change her diaper. She was very interested in looking at the bones through the magnifying glass, “Bone? Bone!” was her chant after that.

We are garbed up in purple tonight for the Rockies game 2.


We were going to watch it at the park, but everyone voted to stay home. Hannah can say, “Go Rockeeee!” it’s so cute.

Tomorrow it’s presentation club and a dome tour at the capitol. Looks like we’ll have another sunny day for that trip.