I’m a 4th generation nurse and plan on passing down my love of the human body to my girls. For the past few weeks we’ve been focusing on activities that help us learn about the human body. I fell in love with this activity to help teach the names of the major bones.
Materials you will need:
- Black Construction Paper
- Craft Glue
- White Crayon/Marker/Paint
- PRINT OUT: Major Bones of Arms & Legs
I first traced around my preschooler’s arm and foot using a pencil on the black construction paper. You could also use a white crayon or marker, but somehow couldn’t find one. I then used white paint to trace over the pencil marks. I think a white crayon would be the best and easiest, but whatever supplies you have works too.
Next I arranged Q-tips inside the tracings (cut to size) to represent the bones. My kiddo is only three so I didn’t go into too much detail of every bone, and simply labeled them in groups, with the exception of the arm/leg bones.
For this activity we felt through our skin and tried to find the bones in our hands and feet shown on our X-ray. We also said each bone name/group as we labeled them. For older kiddos, you could be more specific by naming each carpal for instance instead of grouping them. If your child has ever broken a bone, you could talk about having an X-ray done and how they felt about the procedure.
Who knew X-rays could be so much fun and educational??