Posts Tagged ‘LEGO’

How to Make a Vegetable Brain

Friday, October 25th, 2019

make-a-vegetable-brain

Studying the brain? Today I will be showing you several hands-on brain activities, including how to make a vegetable brain. My daughter and I are studying psychology from a Christian perspective with a curriculum by 7 Sisters Homeschool. The first chapter was on “The Brain and How It Works.” We learned all the different parts of the brain and how they function together to help us to think and make sense of the world around us.

But first we answered the question: What is psychology? It’s the study of the mind, which is why it’s appropriate to begin by looking at the brain.

Throughout history, though, people have talked about the mind being in other parts of the body, like in your heart or in your bowels. Eeks! Even in modern times, we have sayings that refer to body parts when talking about emotions. Here is a list that my daughter Rachel came up with, along with what each one means:

Music to my ears— Something you wanted to hear
A sight for sore eyes— Relief
I love you with all my heart— I love you a lot
Keep your nose to the grindstone— Keep working
Cold shoulder— Not being open and talking
The apple of my eye— My most treasured thing that I’ll protect
Hands down— Not arguable

Next in our study of psychology, we looked at the human brain and noticed that it looked like cauliflower. Yes, it does. I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too. So we decided to grab some vegetables (including cauliflower) to make a vegetable brain:

How to Make a Vegetable Brain

Grab some cauliflower for the different lobes of the brain: frontal, perietal, occipital, and temporal lobes. Fit them together like a puzzle. Then shove a stick of celery into it from the right side at a diagonal, for the brain stem, which is connected to the spinal cord. A piece of tomato can be the cerebellum at the back of the neck, under the occipital and temporal lobes. Voila! A vegetable brain!

More Hands-on Brain Activities:

You can always draw a diagram of the human brain and color it it with colored pencils:

drawing-of-brain

Then you can grab some play-doh and form a brain by rolling the play-doh into a snake and then coiling it up in a spaghetti mess for the all the lobes of the brain. (If you want, you can make each lobe a different color rather than lumping it all together.) The brain stem and cerebellum can be formed out of different colors and attached to the spaghetti brain:

play-doh-brain

The brain is made up of neurons, which are cells in the nervous system that transmit information. Each neuron has a body, axon, and dentrites. While your play-doh is out, you might as well make a play-doh neuron:

pay-doh-neuron

Or take out LEGOs and create a LEGO neuron:

lego-neuron

Once you’ve done one or two or all of these fabulous activities, you should have a fairly good grasp of the human brain and its functions. (In the video above, I mention what each main part of the brain is, and how each part functions.)

If you are wondering which curriculum we are using, here it is: {affiliate link} Introduction to Psychology by 7 Sisters Homeschool. I love their no-nonsense approach, so that you can get through the basics of psychology without all the fluff. This gives us time to add fun hands-on activities, skits, and movies to the curriculum. Their teacher’s guide includes links to videos and articles online to augment the material presented, along with lists of movies and books that are appropriate to add to each chapter if you want to have an even beefier course. I’m loving it!

LEGO New Jerusalem

Friday, November 6th, 2015

lego-new-jerusalem

When studying the book of Revelation with your kids, you can have them build a LEGO New Jerusalem. This will help them to visualize what it will be like. It is a city with square walls. So you will build a wall around the city, with three gates on each of the four sides.

A river runs through the city. The river flows from the throne of God. The Tree of Life is also along this river, and its leaves give healing to the nations. All of our tears will be wiped away, and there will be no more crying or pain.

new-jerusalem-top

If you look at the bottom LEGO base, you can picture each of the bumps as buildings in the city of God. These would be the mansions that Jesus mentions to His disciples:

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. -John 14:1-3 NASB

You can also choose to make larger buildings with individual LEGOs, making streets and neighborhoods. You have now completed your LEGO New Jerusalem.

If you would like to make drawings or crafts of the New Jerusalem, here are a few more activities you might enjoy:

Jesus Teaches the Multitudes (LEGO)

Wednesday, November 4th, 2015

Jesus-teaches-the-multitudes

When Jesus teaches the multitudes in Scripture, He often has to get into a boat on the water, so that the water can project His voice to thousands of people who gathered to hear Him. My daughter decided to make a scene of Jesus teaching the multitudes out of LEGOs.

She began with a green LEGO base, and she made water on one side (out of two different kinds of blue) and yellow sand on the other side (with yellow and orange LEGOs.) She gathered a crowd of LEGO people. Then she built a brown boat and had Jesus sit in the boat and teach the people.

jordan-river-legoMy kids made a map of the Jordan River and the different cities that Jesus visited during His teaching ministry. Jesus would go from town to town, healing the sick and casting out demons. People would gather in crowds to hear Him speak, because He said things that were unlike any other religious leader of the day. In fact, the religious leaders despised Jesus, and they were the ones who caused Him to be crucified.

You can make a LEGO Jordan River by starting with a couple of LEGO bases. Look at a Bible-time map of the Gospels, and you can easily get the shape. Use blue LEGOs for the water and black LEGOs for the dots indicating the cities where Jesus taught.

If you enjoyed this activity, you will love the Bible section of the Unit Study Treasure Vault, where there are hundreds of ideas for bringing every book of the Bible to life for children!

LEGO Topography

Monday, November 2nd, 2015

lego-topography

You can teach your kids about geography, topography, and landscaping through making topography scenes. You can choose a real location and re-create it in LEGOs, or you can create your own scene. This is a great activity for learning about geographic terms such as waterfall, fjord, peninsula, cave, volcano, archipelago, delta, glacier, island, mesa, etc.

A topographic map uses contour lines to represent three-dimensional features such as mountains. You can teach kids how to read contour maps and have them build the topographic map with LEGOs. You want to start with a green LEGO base representing the lowest area of the map. Build up from there, adding hills, valleys, mountains, volcanoes, etc.

simple-lego-topography

Younger kids can create simpler topographic maps with LEGOs. A river with trees and hills is a perfect starting place. Blue represents water on maps, and green usually represents land that gets plenty of rainfall. Yellow could represent deserts.

lego-cave

We created a scene with a mountain and a waterfall. On the back of the mountain my son created a cave. Trees were added to embellish the lushness of the scene.

If you enjoyed this hands-on geography activity, you will love the Geography section of the Unit Study Treasure Vault!