Human Body: What A Wonderful Gift

We are slowly finishing up our third term around here.  I just had to tell you about the wonderful experience my oldest daughter (11) had with her Human Anatomy Study.   This is the one child who did not start out with a Charlotte Mason education.  The last two years I have been slowly transitioning her studies so that it would not seem overwhelming to her.  I also knew this would be a wonderful experience for her because she is a voracious and advanced reader.

Science has always been a topic that she had covered with a textbook. Those that have snippets of  information for different topics filled with end of the chapter questions, end of unit reviews and so on.  This last year we decided to change things a bit.  She is still reading through Fairyland of Science by Arabella Buckley and narrating through it.  But I also decided to give her something that still felt like a textbook and held CM potential.  We chose Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology by Jeannie Fulbright along with the Journal and some living books:  Science in Colonial America, Galen and the Gateway to Medicine, and The Way We Work.   She worked on her textbook twice a week, the living books once a week (or more if she chose too) and the Buckley book once a week.  She finished working through her anatomy books last week (I had her skip the last chapter on genetics, I have something planned for this later) and all of a sudden I realized I had never asked her for a written narration. I completely relied on her oral narrations through out the entire year.  The written part of end of term exams so far had only focused on our history & geography studies.  So at the end of last week I asked if she would write me an essay with an outline of what she had enjoyed learning about the most in her anatomy book.   Please remember I'm still new to this and have sudden attacks of whether these methods are enough. 

This morning she handed me her finished work and asked if I could type (a skill will be working on this summer) it.  Her outline was complete with an introduction, five key systems of the body and an ending.  Her essay was four pages of hand written front and back no skipped lines.  The content of the essay was so thorough that even I am still completely in aw that she wrote it.  I'll leave you with her closing paragraph to show you how she connected with this topic:

I see the human body in a wonderful way.  To think, that God made us a body filled to the rim with everything we need, just because he loved us.  God's powers are amazing!  He gave us a brain to help us think, lungs that help us breathe, bones (and a spine) to help us stand, blood that brings oxygen to our body tissues and a heart that pumps blood.  We should always be grateful to God for giving us this wonderful gift.  The human body!