Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources 6yr old obsessed with lymph, blood, mitosis, etc.

My son is currently obsessed with the lymph system, white/red blood cells, mitosis, etc. Can anyone recommend a good educational source for this information? He is craving more info, but can't understand the "doctor speak" on the web sites i've found for him. There must be a happy medium somewhere? I would say we are striving for a third grade level.

Some good books are Cell Wars, Enjoy Your Cells, The Way We Work

No, but what I do for things like this is read grown up educational sources and distill it for DS6. I sift through the information and segregate it into phases of learning that he can digest. So, one night, we'll focus on what a cell is and I'll draw a picture for him. Then, phase two will be cell behavior including the permeable casing, division, etc. Phase three would be types of cells and phase four would dovetail wbc's into the lymph system. Maybe I need to get a life but I'm never satisfied with teaching materials and my son loves my methods! The weird part is that I'll spend hours organizing a curriculum on a particular subject and he'll devour it like a snack.

I'm with Cypher on this. I gather as much info as I think he needs, then portion it out. Depending on the subject it may have to be "boiled down" but he gets it.

I would recommend the Anatomy Academy books. They are intended for 5-6th grade level, which might work. They include activities and further topics to research. I don't remember how many books are in the series, but one is about circulatory system, which might be the best one. HTH

Jen

Try cellsalive they have interactives about all the parts of different types of cells as well as sections about mitosis, meiosis and other related stuff. A search engine that is geared towards younger kids is Ask they tend to leave out all the higher level sites in their search which cuts down on your weeding out too. This use to be called Ask Jeeves if you're familiar with that older name.

I also just remembered my daughter has a series of books caled The Usborne Internet-linked First Encyclopedia of ________ (pick a topic ). You can get info from their internet links even without the books. Go to their webpage, First Encyclopedia pick a book topic from the left menu bar and then randomly pick a page number you want to look at and you get a bunch of info. With out the books it will obviously be a bit hit or miss, but it also tells you how you can buy the books.

We have read the magic school bus book 'inside the human body', the illustrations in these are always a good medium between not enough and too much detail, for around 3rd grade. Also, the read and learn book 'germs make me sick' is a good one too.
They both have some info on white blood cell action, but not down to the inner parts.

We found some anatomy coloring books that are pretty fun. I don't recall who makes them. I just found them used (but not colored in) on Amazon for cheap. Not exactly on point, but maybe they have a circulatory system one?

Here's a free immunology resource. It's a download. Dana Immunology Book

There is a book on this from the "Let's Read and Find Out Science" series Level 2 - called "a drop of blood"