The Human Body

When I quit teaching in the public schools to stay home with my first son, I packed away all my stuff, thinking I'd save it for when I went back to work. Five children later, and with a decision to home school, well... I haven't had a (paying) teaching job is almost 15 years. Since I taught 3rd grade, it's always fun when one of my kids goes through that grade and I get to pull out some of the stuff I saved from those early years. Actually, I pull out saved stuff for almost every grade since we seem to go over the same stuff every year, just a different difficulty levels. For example, the human body. My 3rd grader and my 1st grader were covering that topic in both of their science schedules. So, I made a few schedule adjustments so they'd be going over that topic at the same time, and then I pulled out my human body stuff. I have copies of all the major components of the human body. We took butcher paper and traced and cut out their body so we could attach the parts as we studied them. These are so fun!

You can't see it, but the top of their heads will "flap" down so you can see their brains. And, behind the floppy lungs is a heart. You can see it peaking out from behind. The big pink/brown thing under the lungs is the liver, which is attached with a brad so you can look behind it and see the stomach, the gall bladder, the spleen, the pancreas and the kidneys. Under the liver is the intestines. The large intestines is a darker orange and is connected to the small intestines, which is a lighter orange. The whole group is also attached with a brad so you can look behind them and see all the other stuff. Then, one leg shows muscles, while the other leg shows bones.



These guys have been hanging in our school room since January, but it's time to roll them up and put them away. I told they boys that their "bodies" were blog worthy.