How to make a playdough brain model

Sometimes our science lessons are just fun, take our playdough brain model. That was fun. After learning about playdough neuron last week, we proceeded this week to make a playdough brain model and use that as a springboard for our further anatomy lesson studies.

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How to make a playdough brain model

It’s super duper simple, all you need are 3 colors of play dough.  Buying the Play-Doh: Case of Colors (affiliate link) is probably most cost-effective for your playdough brain if you’ve got more than 1 kid, unless you make your own playdough, which I’m never good at.

1. Pick out 3 colors, I like the primary colors, you’ll need 2 large blobs and 1 smaller blob for your playdough brain.
2. Roll out one of your larger blobs into a long snake (look we snuck in some fine motor practice).
3. Wind it back and forth into a weird blobby shape like you see up above.  This is your cerebrum.
4. Add the smaller blue blob onto the back for a cerebellum.
5. Nicely lodged between the other two colors is the brain stem (it’s another much fatter, shorter snake roll).

What we learned from our playdough brain

One of the things that amazed me about our cerebrum is how similar it is in structure to other parts of our body.  There are several different times throughout our body that God designed them with “bumps” or extra hills to increase surface space.  Other places like that: our intestines, lungs, nose, and tongue.  All of these places with extra surface area are designed to increase efficiency.  The kids and I found that fascinating.

Our cerebellum is an area scientists are still finding out more about every day.  Of course, that’s true for all of the brain, but it fascinated me to learn how much the cerebellum interacts with the cerebrum for movement and motor control.

The brain stem is somewhat of a proto-brain because it controls all of our involuntary systems.  We don’t think at all about so many things, it was rather mind-boggling as we tried to think about remembering to breathe and for our stomach to work, and all of those things.

Our brain resources

• Human Anatomy and Physiology
• Junior Anatomy Notebooking Journal
• Christian Kids Explore Biology

More nervous system resources

• Brain puzzle
• Brain hemisphere hat
• Left brain/right brain (I just think the visual is so cool)
• Brain resources

All of these and many more are pinned to my Anatomy pinterest board.

Come back in 2 weeks and learn about the parts of the cerebrum (next week, you’ll get some great July science ideas, you’ll love the suggestions).