This month’s thematic unit is “All About Me”. The first couple weeks we focused on our 5 senses. The following two weeks, we learned about what’s inside our bodies! 💃🏻 This Human Body Unit has been SO fun! We used amazing books (listed at the end of this post) and awesome resources that really made this unit come alive!
The first day, we focused on our bones. We read about why we have them, what they’re made of, and the different types. I made this life-size skeleton when I was teaching second grade, so I was happy to bust it out again. It was a free printable that I cut out—which took forever😳—and laminated.
I found another free skeleton printable, which I laminated and cut out. The girls assembled them and then we used pushpins to act as the joints. 📌 They loved making the skeleton dance!
Next up, the muscular system! 💪🏻 We talked about different muscles in our bodies, how we use them everyday, and the way they work with our bones.
I made a simple hand 🖐🏻 with straws, string, and glue to demonstrate how the tendons in our hands work. Working those fine motor skills to pull those strings!
Organs
I used a free human body printable from 123kidsfun as a map to put all of our organs in their right place. All of the awesome organ printables are from Adventure in a box, which are free, too! They didn’t fit exactly on top of our skeleton, but they were pretty darn close!
Lungs
Here is a quick How-To video on my DIY lungs! I used these free organ printables from @adventureinabox and found the nose and mouth on google images. Super simple. Lots of fun!
We also did a fun lung demo with water! Make sure to watch until the end when we used colored water!
Any mamas feel overwhelmed with science? 🙋🏻♀️ Does this look easy enough??
Heart & Blood
We found some fun YouTube videos that explained what the heart does, but all I really want B to remember is that our heart pumps blood to our bodies❤️ We pointed out some veins we could see through our skin and she thought mine were really cool because they were so much bigger than hers 😂 Of course we had to make some blood to go along with it.
On to my girl’s favorite part of this unit…BLOOD! 💉 We used water and yellow food coloring for the plasma, marshmallows for the white blood cells (make sure to use mini marshmallows instead of cutting up big ones like I did…they were so sticky!) , cut up straws for platelets, and Cheerios and food coloring for red blood cells, which B discovered is what makes our blood red! 🔴
Here is how we made it:
Brain
I created this template on Photoshop and used my Cricut to cut it out. If you don’t have a paper cutting machine, you can get a similar effect with circle punches and hole punches for the smaller circles
Do you have a Cricut and want to use this template I created? Great! Click Here.
Don’t have one yet? They are AMAZING. See for yourself!
(affiliate link)
Books
Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia
We LOVED these books. I highly recommend all of these for this unit. The Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia is gold. Can you see all my blue tabs? I’ve already marked out what pages we are going to visit throughout the year.
Hope you enjoyed a peek inside our Human Body Unit!
