Each year I always try to bring new units and themes into classroom. This usually means a new research project. And that is where our human body research project comes into play! We have always done five senses but the human body is a new twist for us. And I have to say we had a blast learning about the body!
As with all of our research projects we kick off with a schema map! This schema map is a brain (clearly….I mean my artistic skills are amazing!) Before we learn about the human body, we share our schema. Thi is what we already know. As students share, I record their schema on a Post-It Note and place it on our schema map. As we progress through our two week unit, we add our new learning. At the end of our unit, we revisit our schema and address any misconceptions we might have!
For each body system we do a read aloud (the research!) and complete a tree map!
For each body part or body system, we also do a little art project or science lesson.
When we learned about the skeleton, Mr. Greg showed the kids his real knee x-ray and then we painted an x-ray of our arm!
We do self portraits of our brains! I had the students lay down on a piece of construction paper and traced their heads. Then they drew and colored their brains!
For our stomach project, we talked about things we liked to eat. We used a Kroger sale circular and filled our stomachs with foods! This provided a great discussion about healthy foods and what we can and cannot eat (we don’t eat crayons). And yes, there was a picture of beer in the sale circular. We saw it, we laughed and said it did not go in our stomach and we moved on!
Our final human body project is putting the organs onto our body! Mr. Greg had a fellow teacher trace him and the students put his organs in his body. Students then did their own body assembly!
And of course we have a human body snack! And what could be better than a Jello brain and heart!!!?
Check out these human body books that we used for our read alouds!
For some human body freebies, check out this post:
