Stroop Effect, Conservation of Liquids, Mirror Neurons

A few things I had pictures for, that didn't fit in on my other posts:

We tried out the "conservation of liquids" test on Daisy, who is right on the cusp of that developmental stage. (Children under about 5 are unable to make this mental leap. When they see two identical glasses of water that are equal in amount, and then they watch you pour the water from one of the glasses into a taller glass, they still say that the taller glass has "more water.") Daisy, as expected, didn't understand that the amounts of water were still equal even though one looked taller. The boys were very delighted to see evidence of this phenomenon before their very eyes! :)

We also really liked doing the "Stroop Test," which involves first reading a paper like this:

and then one like this:

The trick is, you have to say the COLORS of the words, rather than the words themselves, on both images. You time yourself doing both versions and then compare your times. For a pre-reader (Daisy and Junie) it's very easy and there is no conflict! They just say the colors of the words. But once your brain is able to interpret what the words mean, the meaning and the color interfere with each other on the second image and your time slows way down! If you try the same test but this time read the word instead of saying the colors, most people have improved times. This shows that the brain prioitizes meaning over color (and understandably so).

The children loved doing this test! They thought it was so strange and funny.

One more note: this unit stretched over Valentine's Day, so on that day we had a little party and made valentines and homemade oreos (with pink frosting, of course), and then we talked about empathy and love and how those emotions help us understand and be kind to other people. We watched this interesting video about "mirror neurons" as part of that discussion.

Memory

We had a lot of fun learning about memory and working on tricks to improve our memories! We learned about mnemonic devices and practiced using them to memorize things. We played this game of "what is on the tray" (you look at the tray for 3 minutes, then take it away and have 5 minutes to write down what was on it). After doing our best to remember (we could get 7-10 of the 20 things), I told a story that incorporated all the objects. Then we tried again, and ALL of us (even me!) were able to remember all 20 objects! Amazing.

Then we picked some other things to memorize, and came up with our own mnemonics. Abe memorized the first 20 digits of pi, which he now enjoys spouting off at random times. :)

We did the same maze a few different times, to observe how much our times improved the 2nd and 3rd times through. Our brains are able to learn and improve so quickly!

I relied heavily on my old Psychology textbook for this unit (Meyers in Modules! I love it!) and it was really fun to relearn a lot of the things I found so fascinating in high school and college. I loved my psychology and Human Development classes.

We watched these two video clips from NOVA:

Memory vs intelligence and

How Memory Works

This post about short-term memory and long-term memory is really interesting

This video of memories forming is cool also!

This page has some great resources on memory.

We played "the eyewitness" game as described at that link---I had Sam come into the room (he was working from home that day) several times while we were having school, and do several very strange things. He changed clothes between appearances, and did things like whistling, putting things over his head, moving objects around, muttering to himself, etc. But he was kind of unobtrusive about it, so though most of us looked up when he came in, we didn't comment or otherwise engage with him. Later on, I asked the children to write down everything they remembered about what Daddy was wearing, what he had done while he was in the room, etc. It was HILARIOUS to read how vastly differing these "eyewitness" accounts were! And it showed us how very unreliable our memories can be, especially when we aren't deliberately choosing to encode information.

We also enjoyed this game (from the same website):

Sometimes your brain makes up its own memories. Try to "implant" a memory by asking people to remember the words on list 1. Wait about five minutes, then probe their memory by asking them which words on list 2 they remember.
List 1: read, pages, letters, school, study, reading, stories, sheets, cover, pen, pencil, magazine, paper, words
List 2: house, pencil, apple, shoe, book, flag, rock, train, ocean, hill, music, water, glass, school
Did they say that "book" was on list 1? Only pencil and school were on list 1.
Try these words:
List 1: sheets, pillow, mattress, blanket, comfortable, room, dream, lay, chair, rest, tired, night, dark, time
List 2: door, tree, eye, song, pillow, juice, orange, radio, rain, car, sleep, cat, dream, eat
Did they say that "sleep" was on list 1? Only pillow and dream were on list 1.
Make up your own lists and see if you can create a false memory.

Brain hats (cerebral cortex)

We loved making this brain hat (UPDATE: if that link won't work for you, try this: Go to the link here: https://ellenjmchenry.com/ and go to "Free downloads--> Human Body". Then scroll down and under "brain" you will see a link for "brain hemisphere hat." Hope that works for you!) while we talked about parts of the brain! It just shows the functions of the cortex (we covered internal structures separately) but we made it early on in the unit and referred to it often throughout.

The hats were easy to make. Just print and cut out and tape together. Download is here.

When we talked about the parts of the brain, we also did this activity that shows the importance of the cerebrospinal fluid, the meninges, and the skill. Also what happens when you get a concussion! :)

Ooh, and while we're on the subject of brain hemispheres, you really should watch this video from The Happy Scientist of "Kneesy Earsy Nosey." First watch this from Laurel and Hardy, then watch the Happy Scientist explain why it's so hard to cross the midline! We all resolved to get good at doing this, but none of us have (yet). :)

More brain structures (I told you my children liked diagrams)

Wondering why my children always seem to be dressed as animals? They just . . . are.

This was Junie's magnum opus. She spent an hour coloring it so neatly. I quite like it.

Since the hats have since been thrown out, I promised the children I would post pictures of every single precious one. :)