Skin and the Sense of Touch

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Animals, The Human Body

Let’s begin with skin that wraps you up and keeps you in,
From the top of your head to the soles of your feet,
It helps keep out cold and helps hold in heat.
It’s a colorful covering germs can’t get through,
Skin protects the inside of you.
Because we have skin we can touch and feel
Things in the world around us!

Our skin is our largest organ and allows us to feel things. It protects our body and is different colors from pale white, to red, yellow, olive, brown and dark ebony. The color of skin is controlled by melanin. The darker the skin – the more melanin is in the cells. Melanin protects skin from sunburn. Some people have freckled skin and some people have no melanin at all and are very white and this is called albino. You can also have special birthmarks or moles on your skin.
Our skin is alive! Blood feeds the skin the oxygen and nutrition that it needs to stay alive through tiny blood vessels. In a lifetime we shed about 45 pounds of skin

LAYERS OF THE SKIN:

EPIDERMIS The skin you see. Your epidermis is always showing! New cells are always forming underneath. You could have a new epidermis in 2 weeks to 2 months. What you see are dead skin cells that flake off.
How the outside epidermis layer helps us:
1. Our first defense against bacteria.
2. Keeps moisture in our body
3. Holds the body together

DERMIS The dermis is thicker than the epidermis and includes the sebaceous or sweat glands that make sebum (the skin’s natural oil that makes skin waterproof!), oil glands, nerve endings, heat, cold, and pressure sensing cells. There is a fat layer that acts as a shock absorber, insulation, and stores energy from food. Hair grows from a follicle canal and oil is produced to keep it soft and flexible.

Blood vessels and fat help control the body’s temperature. We get flushed or red faced when hot and we start to sweat. When we sweat, we cool off and get rid of waste. When we are cold the blood vessels contract and we may get “goose bumps” or when the blood vessels narrow it may make us shiver. You may get rosy cheeks when it’s very cold because blood goes to surface to keep warm

SKIN SAFETY:
The sun can burn skin so we should use sunscreen if we are in the sun a long time.
98.6 is our normal body temperature. Be good to your skin and it will stick close to you! Skin loves to be scrubbed. Always wash cuts and scrapes and dress them if needed. If a cut is deep you may need it sewn up. You may need to get a tetanus shot if you get cut by something that is rusty.
The thickness of skin varies from location to location on an organism. In humans, the skin located under the eyes and around the eyelids is the thinnest skin in the body and is one of the first areas to show signs of aging. The skin on the palms and the soles of the feet is 4 mm thick and the thickest skin in the body. Our fingerprints are individual and all different and used to identify people.
Our skin uses the sun to make vitamin D to help our body build strong bones and teeth.
The skin of our head (our scalp) has about 5 million hair follicles. Hair is made of keratin from protein and our fingernails and toenails are keratin.
Children are usually frightened when they see blood and they need to know that it is OK and that it has cells that fight germs and infections so when the skin is scratched or injured it will bleed some so that germs won’t enter the body. Then white cells in the blood gobble up germs they find and the blood clots forming a scab that gets hard as the skin heals and it falls off. If they understand the role blood plays they will lose their fear.
If you want to let them practice storytelling, let some of them tell about a time when they were hurt.
Many illness and allergies can affect the skin. Some plants like poison ivy can cause rashes and some illnesses like chicken pox can make sores on the skin. I was working in the garden and the sap of the century plant burned my skin. Be cautious and take care of your skin. If you fall or something hits your body you may get a bruise. The area may turn blue from broken vessels that will eventually heal.

Again . . . What does skin do for us?
1. Keeps germs out.
2. Keeps water in.
3. Helps hold the body together.
4. Grows hair.
5. Sweats and cools us off.
6. Makes vitamin D to feed bones and teeth
7. Oils the skin and makes it waterproof.
8. Stores energy.
9. Helps keep us warm.
10. It allows us the important sense of touch that we can feel things like textures and temperatures through our skin

ACTIVITIES:
Let children compare their skin colors.
They can see blood vessels in skin and hair growing from it.
Fur is dense hair and augments the insulation skin provides and may serve as camouflage. On some animals, the skin is very hard and thick, and can be processed to create leather. Reptiles and fish have hard protective scales on their skin for protection, and birds have hard feathers, all made of tough β-keratins. Amphibian skin is not a strong barrier to passage of chemicals and is often subject to osmosis. Have samples of other kinds of skin coverings like, fur, feathers, scales, snakeskin, or toy examples of animals with different coverings like, fur, needles, scales, feathers, or exoskeleton chitonous outside coverings like bugs have.
I have a little feely bag and the kids take turns trying to guess what they feel in the bag without looking. Young children love to do this. You can also create a texture box from fabrics or see if certain colors make them feel warm or cold.

The Legend of the Christmas Spider

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Animals, Land Animals

THE LEGEND OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIDER
A folk legend from Germany and the Ukraine

Once upon a time long ago, a mother was busily cleaning the house getting ready for Christmas. Not a speck of dust was left. Even the spiders were banished from their cozy corners in the ceiling and finally fled to the attic.
T’was Christmas Eve at last! The tree was all decorated for the children to see it. The poor spiders were frantic because they could not see the tree or be present for the celebration.
The oldest and wisest spider suggested that they could peep through the crack in the door. Silently they crept out of the attic, down the stairs, and across the floor to wait at the threshold. Suddenly the door opened a wee bit and quickly the spiders scurried into the room. They wanted to see the tree closely, since their eyes were not accustomed to the brightness of the room. They crept all over the tree, up and down, over every branch and twig and saw every pretty thing. At last they satisfied themselves completely of the Christmas tree beauty.
But Alas!! Everywhere they went they had left their webs and when the little Christ child came to bless the house he was dismayed. He loved the little spiders, for they were God’s creatures too, but he knew the mother, who had trimmed the tree for the little children, wouldn’t feel the same, so He touched the webs and they all turned to shimmering silver and gold! Ever since that time, we have hung tinsel on Christmas trees, and according to the legend, it has been a custom to include a spider among the decorations on the tree.

Worms

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Animals, Gardening, Land Animals

Examine worms with children. Worms are important to compost soil.

Worms have 5 hearts, a brain with two tiny lobes and a long spinal chord. It is divided into segments, has no bones but moves using muscles and very tiny hairs that are on each segment. They breath through their skin and it needs to stay moist for them stay alive. A worm has no arms, legs or eyes.

Though worms don’t have eyes, they can sense light, especially at their anterior (front end). They move away from light and become paralyzed if exposed to light for too long (approximately one hour). If a worm’s skin dries out, it will die.There are approximately 2,700 different kinds of earthworms.

Worms live where there is food, moisture, oxygen and a favorable temperature. In one acre of land, there can be more than a million earthworms. The largest earthworm ever found was in South Africa and measured 22 feet from its nose to the tip of its tail.

Worms tunnel deeply in the soil and bring subsoil closer to the surface mixing it with the topsoil. Slime, a secretion of earthworms, contains nitrogen. Nitrogen is an important nutrient for plants.

Worms are cold-blooded animals and have the ability to replace or replicate lost segments. This ability varies greatly depending on the species of worm you have, the amount of damage to the worm and where it is cut. It may be easy for a worm to replace a lost tail, but may be very difficult or impossible to replace a lost head if things are not just right.

Baby worms are not born. They hatch from cocoons smaller than a grain of rice. Worms are hermaphrodites. Each worm has both male and female organs.

Worm Bucket

The Mantid

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Animals, Land Animals

This is a mantid. Recently I captured a mantid in my garden and put it in the terrarium in the classroom for the children to watch. You must feed them bugs and they are voracious eaters. We caught some grasshoppers today and the mantis loves ants. We put a sponge soaked in water in the tank or you may give it a spray of water on the glass. I will return home to my garden soon.

Two or more of these insects are called mantids. They are close relatives of cockroaches and stick insects. An adult mantis can get 13 cm long – about 12 inches. They have a head shaped like a triangle and a long “neck”, the thorax. They are the only insect that can turn its head 180 degrees from side to side without moving the body. The forelegs have sharp spines on them for catching prey and they always bite the neck first. Mantids keeps the forelegs folded and held together as if praying.

Mantids are usuall green or brown and easily camouflaged on leaves and stems. One kind of mantis is pink. They have wings but are very poor at flying and walking.They like to sit and wait for their prey.When prey comes close, they are very fast with their forelegs to catch it. The reflex of their forelegs is so fast it is difficult for our eyes to see them grab a meal. Mantids are voracious eaters and are carnivores only eat animals such as bees, beetles, moths, butterflies, aphids, crickets, flies, and other insects. They are cannabalistic and will eat other mantids or their mate. The female is famous for biting the head off of the male after mating. Large adult mantids may even eat small birds, frogs or lizards. They are solitaary hunters with biting and chewing mouth parts.

Mantids molt or shed their exoskeleton to grow larger. They have 2 large sensitive compound eyes that can tell if something moves 60 feet away.with 3 simple eyes between them. The mother mantid lays several hundred eggs in an egg case made from a frothy secretion that hardens to protect the eggs. The egg case can withstand severe winter weather and hatches after about 8 weeks of warm weather. A mantis may lay several egg cases usually attached to twigs, leaves, or fences.. The egg case will hatch the following spring and about 200 tiny nymphs that look very much like adults will crawl from betwween tiny flaps in the egg case and hang from silken threads to dry out. The egg case does not change appearance in any way.

Mantids are harmless to humans and they can become tame enough to eat insects from your fingers. The praying mantis is considered diurnal meaning they are most active in the day time, but sometimes you can see them flying around at night. Their average life span is 1 year.

THE ORCHID MANTIS!

FLOWER MANTIS