The Brain and Money

We've had a busy couple of weeks.  Adding onto our human body, we created an illustration of the brain.  Sathya was fascinated with it (online you can find anything, including real pictures and videos!).  He wanted to know why it was squishy and gooey because when he feels his own head, it is hard.  I explained the function of our skull in protecting our ooey gooey brain.  Sathya wanted to watch some live videos of human brains, but I had to draw the line.  He may not get squeamish, but his mother sure does!

If you look closely, you can see where we added the different lobes and their functions.  I tried to make it as simple as I could so that Sathya grasps the main point I was making: how complex our brains are, which means we must take care of them!  Taking care of them means eating healthy, exercising, and learning to nurture ourselves emotionally.

Frontal lobe: decision-making; personality
Parietal lobe: language
Occipital lobe: visual
Cerebellum: motor
Temporal lobe: memories; sensory
Brain stem: connection to spinal chord

We also have been working with money.  How to count, specifically coins, and what they look like.  This book has helped us tremendously as we work through these lessons:

I also got the idea of creating a money jar, which would teach Sathya and Anand the value of saving up for something special.  I got this idea from the book, A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams:

In the book, a mother, daughter, and grandmother save up coins in order to buy a new chair because their old one had burned in a fire.  It is a tale of hard work, endurance, and most importantly, resilience.  We love this book (a Caldecott Honor book too).


So we created our own money jar.  The money in it will be used toward future vacations.  Each time a coin is placed in the jar, Sathya must tell us what coin it is and how much it is worth.