Skeletal System Lessons
I used to think that Blogging had to be this serious stressful professional endeavor. Now, I just want to share some of the fun things we are doing in our homeschool. While I don’t currently have (or plan to have) any body system products available I am still teaching about body systems in MY homeschool and having a lot of fun in the process so I thought I’d share what we’ve been up to with you.
We started off the with an intro lesson and then moved on to:
Respiratory System
Circulatory System
Digestive System
Nervous System
Integumentary system
Health and Personal Care
I’m holding off on the Reproductive system since my son is just 7 and we are kind of taking it as it comes up.
Lesson #1 Introduction to Body Systems/Trace Body Posters
We introduced body systems by talking about a car and how its parts make up the whole and serve different purposes. Then spoke about what makes up a spirit and a body. What makes you, you. So we talked about physical traits as well as personality traits and traced our bodies for our giant body posters. Then had them write or draw things they like about themselves around the outside of the body. We are using “My Body” book but there are all kinds of life-size body products out there.
Lesson #2 Skeletal System Day One
The skeletal system. We defined skeleton and bones and talked about how bones give our body structure using playdough as an example (if you try to get a tower of play dough to stand up it will fall over, but if you give it “bones” or a hard platic straw it will stand up much higher and straighter).
We also discussed how bones protect our brains, heart, lungs and spine pointing to different parts of our skeleton model (we got it in a set at Costco). A fun chant we like to use is “Bones give structure, bones protect” while we move our arms and legs like a robot to help the kids remember the main functions of our bones. The littlest one then played play dough while the rest of us moved on.
Bones give structure activity.
Checking out the three part cards. I would totally share these but I cannot find my file!
The coloring worksheet.
We looked at a cross-section of a bone and talked about how there are layers with spongy bone, marrow, and blood vessels and how bone marrow has stem cells and produce new blood cells for the body.
We then talked about the difference between bones and cartilage. At this point I had the younger boys glue down their bones to the body posters and the older kids stick around to play with bone 3 part cards and fill out a color-coded bone worksheet found here.
Lesson #3 Skeletal System Day Two
We started the lesson with the skeletal system chant. Then I had the older kids teach the younger kids the names of the bones while they taped them to little brother. (They always get a kick out of this).
Labeling the bones of the body we just used the bone coloring worksheet and cut out the bone names.
Just loving class! And check out our “spine” above.
We discussed joints, tendons, and the spine using ideas/printables from the good and the beautiful body system unit. I had them build the spine saying “Vertebrae/Disc” over and over again until they had it memorized. We tried moving different joints on our bodies as we discovered them on the poster and asked the question “Why can Marlee (9) move her back further than Mommy (34) if our bones both bend in the same way? What else helps our bodies move?” As we brainstormed one of the little darlings suggested it was because I am much fatter and older. Thanks, kid. Your not wrong though. lol, It was a teaser question leading into our next system of muscles through and getting them to think of the body as a whole. We reviewed ways to keep our bones healthy and did the chant again before I had the younger boys work on their body posters while the older kids filled out a bone anatomy quiz found at the link above.