Huh? What? Cranial nerves? Are you sure? Yes! What an exciting topic for anyone of any age! I mean, what is cooler than the brain? Not too much. I swear I am not too biased - I only studied neuroscience for a few years. Really, the brain is incredible when you think about all of its capabilities - can you imagine understanding even just the basics of brain function now, let alone as a kid? That wasn’t a rhetorical question, that was meant to really get you thinking that the answer is more than merely great information. Learning about the brain can actually help you learn about yourself and the way you work, from the way you move to the way you think. It can even help control a few toddler tantrums.

Completely on her own and unprompted by either of us parents, Henley decided she wanted to learn about the body. The body is a fascinating topic so rather than wait for a particular sit-down session to learn, we started talking about bones and muscles just as we were out and about in the grocery store or at the gym. We started with more obvious parts and ones with bony prominences that you can see like the tibia, patella, fibula, femur, radius, humorous, vertebrae, and so on. Then we started with a few basic muscles and their familiar names: quads, thighs, calves. And finally, we gave those muscles their scientific names. What was ironic about these early moments is that, while Henley was interested in those topics, she was not enthralled by them in the same way that she is with a lot of other new subjects and ideas that we introduce. We both figured that since she had come up with the idea to study the body on her own, that she was simply enamored with the ideas. Yeah, not so much. It could be because we weren’t learning bones and muscles as “work” but rather as everyday conversation, or maybe when she said “I want to learn about the body” that is not what she actually meant (deciphering the intentions of a toddler can be the worst time!(. .

Once we got to actual work sessions to study the body, we took a different approach. A much, much, much smaller approach. Not just smaller bones or muscles, like the kind of smaller you can’t really see. We started with cells. General prokaryote cells, then bone cells, then nerve cells. Henley was drawing the cells and their main components, as well as labelling them appropriately. This just so happened to be the first time Henley had to label a sketch, so we showed her the right area to place a word and to put a box around it so it’s clear that it’s a label. Now she’s boxing in everything she writes. As I write this blog, John is just now having an epiphany about why Henley want to put boxes around each title world she put at the top of a writing lesson he did with her the other day - labels! It’s funny what kids take to. Cells, though, that seemed to spike her interest. Henley likes using her imagination (re: she is a cat four out of seven days of the week and she has regular conversations with her stuffed turtle BT) and when you are talking about cells you have to do just that. These teeny tiny things makes up your whole body and within these teeny tiny things are moving parts that eat, make new parts, move the cells around, and more! It is like magic! Especially to a child.

After getting a good handle on cells, we moved on to the brain. I had to grab all of my old undergraduate and grad school books out of storage, dust them off, pull out thousands of tabs, and try to flatten scrunched papers that looked like they had coffee spilled all over them (there is no coffee in storage by the way, so go figure), but the payoff was tremendous. Henley was stoked the entire time! We started by teaching her the brain lobes and their basic functions. I have more brain pictures strewn across my notes then I ever needed to draw and I feel like I should be a professional brain sketcher. Henley definitely will be one in no time. Currently, she and John are drawing brains that look like clouds and cauliflowers - so definitely the right track. After drawing and understanding basic brain areas, we dove straight in to cranial nerves.

Does, or maybe even better is “can”, a three year old understand cranial nerves? Why, yes, of course! We teach our kids all about smell and taste and touch in our everyday lives, we even spend time making special sensory activities for them, so all we did was add a scientific name and a number to what she was doing. Seem too simple doesn’t it? Well, that’s just what it is, simple!

In teaching Henley about the 12 cranial nerves, we not only taught her the names and their basic function, but we showed them to her in the full diagnostic diagrams too. Did you know if you flip a brain upside down, you can see most of the cranial nerves? Henley is learning to label them now and to see that where they are in the brain has an effect on what they do. We even introduced roman numerals as a corollary lesson. The more we introduce now, the easier it will be when we really want to delve into it. It is pretty confusing telling a child that an “i” is a 1 and three i’s “iii” is 3, just to have the letters change, add, and subtract, so better to get it in there now rather than later. Do you remember the letters for 50? 100? 500? 1000? I for sure do not and I think the only reason John knows any of them is because of the Super Bowl (he swears he learned the acronym Love Can Do More for L,C,D, M back in elementary school, but I know better).

Before we go any further, do you know the cranial nerves and what they control?

Here is a quick list:

I - olfactory nerve- smell

II - optic nerve - vision

III - oculomotor nerve - muscles that move the eye

IV - trochlear nerve - more eye muscles

V - trigeminal nerve - muscles that move the face

VI - abducens nerve - far right and left eye movement

VII - facial nerve - taste

VIII - vestibulocochlear nerve - balance and hearing

iX - glossopharyngeal nerve - taste and swallowing

X - vagus nerve - heart

XI - spinal accessory nerve - muscles of the head

XII - hypoglossal nerve - tongue muscles

While it may seem like a no-brainer, we did not make a huge science lesson from all of this. I imagine it could have been fun smelling different spices, testing our balance on one foot, and making flowers with our tongue. I think those are all great tools to engage a child, but they’re not always necessary either. Tasting sweet and salty foods is fun, but it’s not the greatest justification for instilling the action of a specific cranial nerve or it’s location in a child’s memory. Plus, I don’t plan on Henley running though an evaluation of intact or absent cranial nerves on anyone around here anytime soon.

I do think we might expand this lesson and learn more about the brain, and even use some hands on jell-o/play-dough ideas that teachers and friends have passed down to us, but May is rolling along faster than we thought, and so are Henley’s interests. Our science lessons today switched over to seahorses. Go figure.

The biggest takeaway we can offer you from this cranial nerve lesson is not that you have to go and teach your children about cranial nerves specifically (though if you do so, please, really go for it and don’t hold back!). The moral here is that you should choose something, ANYTHING, that you loved learning about when you were in school, regardless of whether it was in first grade or during your time in college - if you loved it, you can teach it. Your passion for something is what can make relating it to someone else so profound. Make it easy to understand, make your children feel the same way you felt when you were learning about it that first time. Love is contagious. And so is the love of learning.

Reference Book (made for grad school, appropriate for toddler)

Cranial Nerves