Unit Study: Skeletal System

Since I have decided to take a more relaxed approach these days, I want to do some fun unit studies. This one is about skeletons.
We will just let them flow and not plan how long each one takes. The more information and ideas I find, I will just add them in. When we feel like we've learned all we need, we will move to another subject (or even a related subject... like right now we are learning about skeletons and it made Justin interested in fossils... so maybe that will be our next unit study).


Yesterday we started with a hands-on project. We placed a big deer leg bone and a chicken leg bone into a bowl of vinegar. The plan is to let them sit for a week and then check and see how hard they are and compare them with one not in the vinegar. I am hoping to post the results of that experiment when we get there. We also watched a couple of helpful YouTube videos about the skeletal system.


Today I made up a song to help us learn the bones easily:

"Help me Learn the Bones"


My head has skull, maxilla, mandible
Go down to Vertebrae, clavicle
Scapula, humerus are in my arms...
Help me learn the bones!

My arm has radius & ulna
Hand my carpal and phalanges
Tickle ribs; crack your vertebrae
Pelvis and sacrum

My leg has femur & patella
Tibia, fibula,& tarsals
Metatarsals and phalanges
We've learned the bones!"


I also got some other great ideas I printed out at this site including several poems about bones & skeletons, as well as the idea to sing the "hokey pokey". Instead of saying "Put your right hand in", you say "put your right phalanges in" and instead of head you say "Skull", etc. You can replace whatever body part with the name of a bone. Lots of fun!

On the site I mentioned above, I got the idea to do a Qtip skeleton. This was too cute and they liked it.



Deer bone and chicken bone. I think I am going to transfer this to something with a lid... vinegar is just a wee bit smelly :-)

They liked this game. It was very easy to make. I found the clipart on microsoft.com and just cut the skeleton into parts and glued onto the construction paper.
They rolled dice, and picked up whatever number they rolled. When they picked up the piece they were to say the parts. After everyone picked up a piece, they put the skeleton together. I am keeping this game in an envelope to keep playing until they learn all the parts.
I told Michael if I would have thought ahead, I could have waited until after Halloween because of all the skeletons they sell. Oh well, we had already started when I thought of this so I just went ahead with it.