Have you ever wanted to make edible skin?  I know what you thinking, that sounds gross, and why on earth would I want to eat the skin, yuck!  Here is the thing, we love making fun and gross things to help us learn.  I don’t care if these items are for elementary kids or college kids, if it’s fun, helps us learn, and helps us understand then we do it.

The girls decided they wanted to learn about the human body.  Just for a change of pace, learn how our body works and become healthier.  Since the girls are in middle school, I thought we would make Unschooling a little more challenging.

They actually asked me to simulate a real job, which brought up another whole discussion, but more on that another day. The boss (me) gives an assignment, and a deadline, and the employee ( student)  has a presentation of what you found out. My job was to find out how to incorporate this into our Unschooling and make it fun and educational. I started by looking on Pinterest and Google for ideas that we could merge into our learning, like skin cake.

We decided to learn about skin first.  Here are some great YouTube Videos:

We made edible skin cake, to learn about the layers of skin

What we learned:

Don’t use a whole bag of marshmallows but you can if you want.  The jello was still hot when we poured it over our marshmallows and heavier so it seeped to the bottom.  No need to flip the cake but it was fun to make a mess.  The fruit roll-ups make it really hard to cut the cake.  This would be great for a Halloween party with a lot of kids and fun for parents to gross them out.

I told the girls they had to come up with 4 questions, so they could learn more about skin. I also gave them a deadline (Friday).

1. Why does skin get moles?
   Moles occur when cells in the skin grow in a cluster instead of being spread throughout the skin.
2. Can dehydration cause wrinkled skin?
   Dehydration causes damage to the cells involved and damaged skin cells cause wrinkles.
3. Why does hair change color?
   Changes in hair color typically occur naturally as people age, eventually turning the hair gray and then white.
4. What are fingernails and toenails made of?
   Fingernails and toenails are made of a tough protective protein called keratin.
5. Why don’t some people have freckles?
   Lighter skin people have less melanin in their skin than darker skin people so when someone with lite skin is exposed to the sun their bodies only have enough melanin to protect one spot in their skin causing a freckle instead of an even tan.
6. Does your skin color affect your hair color?
   Yes and no because someone with very dark skin would not be born with blonde hair but at the same time, someone with very lite skin can be born with black hair.
7. Does your skin color affect your eye color?
   African-American, Hispanic, and Asian babies are almost always born with dark eyes that stay dark. On the other hand, Caucasian babies are usually born with dark blue or even slate-gray eyes that may change several times before a baby’s first birthday?
8. Does your skin color affect your body temperature?
   Short answer NO.

Unschool Tools We Use and Love

We’ve been traveling full-time since 2010 and have purchased a lot of tools that have stood the test of time and continue to help us keep learning. We’ve handpicked each one of the items listed and never recommend anything we don’t personally use and love.  These links are affiliate links from Amazon and other awesome companies. An affiliate link simply means that if you click through and purchase (costs you nothing extra) we get a few pennies too. If you enjoy what we do here, shopping through these links is a great way to help keep us creating and sharing.

Here are some Unschool Tools about the human body:

• Human Body Wall Reusable Sticker
• Survive! Inside The Human Body Volume 1
• Human Body Anatomy Kit
• Frog Dissection Kit
• The Grossest Guts Bundle
• Human Body Detectives: A Heart Pumping Adventure