Guest Post - Skeleton Fun

 


Shelly and her kids learn about the human body and skeleton in this guest post, using printable resources available from Activity Village.

Out and About with our Scavenger Hunts


Learning about the body and skeleton

By Shelly

I have been wanting to start a body theme with the kids and remembered the cute skeleton colouring picture that we used last year for some Day of the Dead Art.  I like this picture because it is simplified so you can use it as a basic starting point to emphasis some key names and parts before you go onto the detail.

We started by just trying to redraw the skeleton. My son opted to use the person template as his basic body outline and then started drawing his skeleton inside.  

Drawing a skeleton inside the person template
Drawing a skeleton inside the person template

Drawing his skeleton
Drawing his skeleton

Using the person template definitely seemed to help him with the different proportions – making sure the leg and arm bones are similar size - although I did also notice that he ended up not having enough space for the feet and hands.

His finished drawing
His finished drawing

And then we tried to draw the skeleton without the person template.

Drawing a skeleton without the template as guidance
Drawing a skeleton without the template as guidance

We also used the skeleton colouring page to try and remember and label the significant bones.

Adding his own labels to the skeleton colouring page
Adding his own labels to the skeleton colouring page

We did okay but did refer to the more detailed labelled human skeleton picture for a few names and also for some spellings. The labelled human skeleton picture also comes with a blank version were the kids can add their own labels onto the skeleton – we are still working up to this as I think it can be a little overwhelming to just start with such a detailed skeleton. I thought I might take the labelled skeleton and just cover a few of the labels with card as an intermediate step.

Covering up some of the bones with labels
Covering up some of the bones with labels

After we had finished our labelling I felt like we needed to do something a bit lighter so we dug out our playdough and all of us (yes me as well) had a go at created playdough skeletons. This was actually a lot of fun.

Creating his own skeleton from playdough
Creating his own skeleton from playdough

And here's another playdough skeleton
And here's my daugher's playdough skeleton

And I must admit I think they both did an excellent job!

I think once you spend some time trying to model the different bones – figure out which ones fit together, which ones are bigger or smaller, curved etc - you remember more of the detail and also which bones go where.

Surprisingly my son actually asked for another skeleton activity so I printed out some more copies of the skeleton colouring page and I tested the kids.  I would say something like "this bone (e.g. ribcage) needs to be light green" and then they would colour the bones that they thought were the ribcage light green.

Colouring in his skeleton colouring page
Colouring in his skeleton colouring page

It actually turned into a really good activity and my son even split a few of the bones so he could add in extra detail.

I have really enjoyed using the skeleton colouring page as an introduction to our body theme, I think it worked really well.

Out and About with our Scavenger Hunts

This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 8 and 10. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.

You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.

 

Guest Post - Skeleton Fun
Thursday, 26th September 2019

Become a Member to access 39,201 printables!