Konos Unit: Attentiveness Theme: General Attentiveness/Ears and Other Senses We built a crawl through ear to help the kids really experience the ear and see all the working parts up close. Stuart worked on cutting and taping to build the outer ear. Why is he laughing so much about a box? Surprise! Oh, there were two little munchkins hiding in the box! They seem very excited about our crawl through ear. With some kid wrangling, Stuart was finally able to finish his project. Here is our ear and ear canal. It's amazingly quite sturdy for being just two boxes taped together. I tell you, Stuart can build an ear! I drew the ear on the front of the box and Nicholas labeled it with the correct term, "Pinna", which is the visible part of the ear that we all see. Next Nicholas gathered various parts from around the playroom to use in assembling the middle and inner ear and labeled them. We have a water frisbee for the Ear Drum, a baby toy hammer for the Hammer, a part of a Star Wars ship for the Anvil, a Nerf gun support stand for the Stirrup, and a styrofoam pool noodle for the Cochlea. I opened up two more boxes to use for the walls of the inner ear. However, they are significantly more flimsy than Stuart's part of the ear. I added a big sheet to cover the entire ear and it was time to explore! Is that an eyeball in our Pinna? Yes, that was Nicholas' eyeball! Oh, the kids are having so much fun with our ear. And amazingly, this has really helped Nicholas to learn the parts of the ear without even trying to memorize anything. What a fun way to learn!