Love your guts! Learning anatomy with kids
Anatomy is one of my older one’s, Sunshine’s, most favorite subjects. Don’t ask me why – the answer is as mysterious to me. We were studding the skeleton this week, upon completion of our skeleton model he peted the ugly set of bones and fondly declared: “He is so cute! Let’s name him Sunshine, just like me.” I felt a little stupid, but I couldn’t agree with either of those statement. Definitions of cute cast aside, I prefer not to use my family members names for something like this… “All right, Mom, can we name him Smiles, like the baby?” What did I say about the family members’ names? If you missed our whole learning revolution, or rather reorganization, or you would like to investigate the materials from our other categories, view our categories or even entire MS Word file with all subjects gathered in one long document. My Categories. Categories – Materials and ToDo lists (MS document)Materials Useful for Learning Anatomy
Books:- The Magic Schoolbus:
- Rookie Read
- How Do Your Lungs Work (Rookie Read-About Health) by Don L. Curry
- How Does Your Brain Work (Rookie Read-About Health) by Don L. Curry
- Where Does Your Food Go (Rookie Read-About Health) by Wiley Blevins
- You Have Healthy Bones! (Rookie Read-About H… by Susan DerKazarian
- You Are What You Eat (Rookie Read-About Health) by Sharon Gordon
- Cat in a Hat:
- Inside Your Outside: All About the Human Body (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) – Hardcover (Aug 26, 2003) by Tish Rabe and Aristides Ruiz
- Oh the Things You Can Do That Are Good for You!: All… by Tish Rabe
- Ouch! how your body makes it through a very bad day by Richard Walker
- Terrific learning games for kids a little older then mine:
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Anatomy of the Human Body
- Human Body and Mind – Interactive Body Shockwave tour of the human body. Recommended for students of middle school age or older
Unit 1 – Body Organs
- PPT presentations at https://educationaltoysplanet.com/blog/encyclopedic-knowledge-human-physiology
- Toys: Touch and Learn Teddy, Puppy, etc.
- Spill Your Guts Human Body Game
- Books mentioned above
Unit 2 – 5 Senses
- Teachable Touchables Texture Squares Originally we got this one for the baby, Smiles. But nobody could keep their hands off it! The box contained a booklet with games and it turned out to be a perfect (and educational) family game that could be enjoyed by all family members, including the baby. The baby, Smiles, loved touching, taking it in and out of the bag, mouthing and giving to us. The four year old, Sunshine, was enjoying the competitive aspect of the games – let’s collect pairs, let’s match them by design, etc. What’s included? Pairs of different squares (felt, fur, silk, rubbery net, shiny reflective one, cotton, fleece, leather, a few others) that can be matched as a pair, or as a set of different materials, or even by the look: dots, stripes. Well worth it.
- Books:
- i. The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses by Joanna Cole
- ii. My Five Senses (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1) by Aliki
- iii. You Can’t Smell a Flower with Your Ear! (All A… by Joanna Cole
- Web:
- ii. ScienceWithMe project on five senses:
- ScienceWithMe project on tasting:
Unit 3 – Digestive System
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- Spill Your Guts Human Body Game I loved the idea of having body organs and a game all in one. We still haven’t played it as a game, because the game is designed for much older kids. We had this game since my son was about 18 months – we just would handle each organ, find a place for it in a body (with mommy watching like a hawk so that her precious Sunshine doesn’t swallow some tiny body organs). I wish I found felt models or bigger models – in this game we miss a few important organs – brain and bladder. We ended up making them with playdough.
- Human Body Anatomy Model
- Human Anatomy Floor Puzzle
- Books:
i. What Happens to a Hamburger? (Let’s-Read-and-Find… Science 2) by Paul Showers and Edward Miller I absolutely loved that this book contained plenty of “experiments”: chew a carrot for 10 seconds and see the beginnings of digestive system… dissolve sugar in a water glass… With this hands on approach it is a lot easier to understand all the concepts and processes.
ii. Where Does Your Food Go (Rookie Read-About Health) by Wiley Blevins My son always loved this book. We had it since he was 18 months and he really couldn’t get enough of it. As all Rookie Read books, it has good illustrations, large fonts for kids to read by themselves, but we are still reading it together and discussing every page, every picture.
iii. The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body – Paperback (Oct 1, 1990) by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen This is one of the older editions of the MagicSchoolBus books. This book contains LOTS of facts. Actually, I find these books too busy: it is hard to read, since we are distracted by comics-like conversations, notes-like facts on the side, illustrations, and actual story. Usually it takes us a whole week to complete a book like this. I take it to my advantage – we read, take a break, discuss it, and the next day my Sunshine tells me in his own words what we’ve read, so that mommy knows where we should start reading again. Or mommy tells in her own words – repetition never hurts anyone. Nevertheless we like new editions that follow the TV show much better.
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- TV/DVDs
i. Magic School Bus “For Lunch”. It is part of “Human Body” DVD.
Unit 4 – Skeletal system
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- Books:
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- Toys-games-puzzles:
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- PPT: