Learning about the Human Body Systems

This learning pack was a great help when introducing the human body systems to my now fourth-grade boy.  I'm sharing some of the highlights of our activities and previews of the contents of this learning pack that is perfect for early learners and upper elementary students.

Study of Digestive System for Kids

Our Digestive System Learning Packet is finally up in our shop, and I'm so excited to share some of the details here with you! As usual, I made this for my elementary and high school kids, so this set is designed to be used by kids from upper elementary.   The aim of this study is to:

• Understand the process of digestion
• Identify the organs taking part in the digestive system and know their functions
• The role of food and  lifestyle in keeping our digestive system healthy

My Body and I Preschool Mini Unit

Learning about you and your body has never been this fun! With 10 engaging printable activities, filled with beautiful illustrations, I'm presenting our newest mini-unit MY BODY AND I PRESCHOOL MINI UNIT.  Below is a sneak peek of what's included in the learning pack and how you can use it at home and in school.

Introducing Dental Health to Kids

My 6-year-old child is enthusiastic about learning more about their teeth and dental health after we went for a routine checkup with our dentist yesterday. As a result, I prepared some fun and educational activities for them at home, and we had a wonderful time discussing dental health together.

Here are some activities and ideas you can try with your children or students to create a dental-themed unit. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

Human Body Montessori-Friendly Learning Materials

In today’s post, I want to share a few Montessori-friendly materials that we use in learning about the human body.  I’ve been often asked about this topic so I prepared a dedicated post to specifically tackle this.

Hands-on Learning on the Human Body for Preschoolers

Vito is getting more interested in how his body works, especially that a few months ago, he got sick and I have to discuss some important things to him about his health and body.  With this, I started reading to him some of our body books, explaining what happens to the food that he eats, to the water that he drinks, and why he has blood when he has a cut.

Learning The Human Skeleton for Preschoolers

We’ve been singing a lot of Halloween songs at home lately and Vito was fascinated with the Skeleton Dance song.  I decided to give him some activities on skeletons just like what Mavi and I did years ago (The Skeletal System).

Teeth Activity for Toddlers! (29 Months Old)

Vito is 29 months old.

Another fantastic activity I got from my Pinterest board!  This is a perfect activity for toddlers to explore their teeth as they can’t usually see it.  This is so easy to assemble and will keep your little ones engaged!

The Study of the Circulatory System for Kids

It’s another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I’m going to share with you some simple and easy to prepare lessons and activities for learning the circulatory system of the human body.  I mentioned earlier how Mavi was asking me a lot of things about the human heart and the diseases of the heart that causes death in some famous people.  Bombarding me with so many questions and that eagerness to learn, we worked on this unit study to:

• Learn about the human heart and how it functions
• What causes heart diseases
• A better understanding of blood vessels: vein and artery
• How to prevent heart diseases
• What’s the role of the blood in the human body

In this unit study, we focused on the three major elements that comprises the circulatory system:

• the human heart
• blood vessels
• human blood

As a bonus, I also added a few pointers on how to have a healthy heart!

The Human Heart
Last month, we learned about the human heart, the different parts and how it functions. You can learn more about it in this post, How to Teach the Anatomy of the Human Heart to Kids.


Blood Vessels
First we plotted the network of  blood vessels in our body using our Cardiovascular Information Diagrams sheet as a guide and a printed outline of the human body.  We used PlayDoh (red and blue) to represent the vein and artery.

This activity will introduce the child to the basic concept of how blood is distributed in our body.  By plotting the veins and arteries, they will understand how the organs in the body receives oxygen and nutrients.


Working diligently to replicate our guide


And he realized that even the head have blood vessels!


We went a little farther by inspecting the network of blood vessels, learning the difference between the veins and arteries and capillaries.   Below is a demonstration of the direction of the blood flow in the body through the blood vessels, of how oxygen rich blood enters the artery (except pulmonary arteries) to the capillaries (where oxygen is distributed to the organs) and passes through the vein to enter the human heart.


Here Mavi’s creating an artery, vein and capillary.



He even made his network and labelled the parts.


The Human Blood
This is to demonstrate the composition of blood.  45% red blood cells (red coloured water), 54% plasma (cooking oil) and 1% platelets (bubbles in between).  


Care of our Heart
These cards are included in our heart model.  It identifies 10 foods that are essential for a healthy heart.  Mavi was seriously reading all through the 10 cards and checking if he’s consuming them.  Well of course, he eats almost everything in the list except for the broccoli and wine


And that ends our circulatory system unit.  For more biology related posts see the following:

• Dental Unit for Kids
• Tooth Cross Section
• Skeletal System
• Study of Internal Organs

For more details on the Circulatory System learning materials you can check this post, Circulatory System Learning Materials.

Don’t forget to PIN this for later! I assure you that you will be needing this in the future

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

 

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

The Pinay Homeschooler ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures

Collection of Human Body Activities for Kids and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Kids love to learn their body parts! Our human body activities has always been a favourite at home and with my readers as well.  Here are some of our favourites throughout the years:

Parts of the body for toddlers

Internal Organs

Human Body Parts for Grade Schoolers

The Human Bones

Skeletal System

 

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured activities for this week!

 

 

 

Hands-on Study of Human Anatomy from Christian Montessori Network

My Body Activities for Tots from Every Star is Different

Teaching Human Anatomy to Your Toddler from Mama’s Happy Hive

Montessori Human Anatomy Activities from Natural Beach Living

Homeschool Unit Study Human Body from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

Montessori Education

Homeschool

Sensory Play

Tot and Preschool Trays

Fine and Gross Motor Activities

Kids in the Kitchen

Healthy Recipes for Kids

Arts and Crafts

Natural Living

Free Educational Printables

Family-Oriented Activities

Healthy LivingYour post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

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Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

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Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

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Follow each of the hosts on social media

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By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.

Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them

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An InLinkz Link-up

How to Teach the Anatomy of the Human Heart to Kids

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Mavi was so excited about this.  He has always been so curious of the human heart and how it works. Because he reads some biographies, he would encounter terms like “died of heart attack” LOL and most probably triggered his curiosity and enthusiasm in learning about the heart.  So I worked hard to create learning materials for our study and I’m so happy that they turned out pretty good, and Mavi loves them!

Objectives on why we study the human heart:

Learn how the heart works

Learn why it is one of the most important organs in the body

Learn its functions

Learn how to avoid getting heart diseases

Learn how to maintain a healthy heart

Learning about the human heart might be too advanced for a 7 years old.  But Mavi was persistent, and because I created the materials suitable for his age (lots of graphic presentation) he was so engaged the entire time we talked about this important internal organ.  Another advantage of learning this at home is that I get to filter “complex” concepts.  This means, I set aside information that he can’t absorb yet and save it once he’s old enough to understand complex functions of the heart.

So let me share with you how we worked on our human heart.  Links to the materials used are provided at the end of this post, including where to buy heart models.

The Human Heart and its Parts

It’s always been a practice that we always start learning about different parts of our subject.  And in Mavi’s case, he learns and absorbs everything with the use of The Human Heart 3-part cards.  We’ve been using this technique since he was 3 years old and so far he’s used to learning this way.  The retention is great, he can remember the parts by working on these cards over and over again. 

Of course, having a heart model adds up to the fun in learning. It’s the closest we can get to visualize what the heart really looks like, unless we dissect a pig’s heart

Aside from the 3 part cards, we also used the definition booklet included in The Human Heart learning pack. It was so handy whenever I needed to describe each part, its function and how it works. We took turns in reading and discussing the parts. 

Afterwhich, Mavi worked on the activity sheets, also included the The Human Heart learning pack.  It’s basically making his own heart anatomy booklet (less the description).

How the Human Heart Works

This part was for Mavi to understand how the blood flows in and out of the heart.  To demonstrate how this works, we used our materials mentioned below, plus pipe cleaners to trace the flow of blood.

In this part, we used the materials The Human Heart learning pack and Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams to learn how the heart works.  I created the information diagrams to see how the blood flows in and out of the heart and the blood distribution to the rest of the body.

As you can see, we used pipe cleaners to demonstrate the blood flow in the left ventricle (blue pipe cleaners) and the red pipe cleaners for the right ventricle. 

So now, Mavi knows which part of the heart is responsible for distributing deoxygenated blood to the lungs and the part which distributes oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.

Heart Diseases

I just have to include this to answer Mavi’s question about “heart attack”. Included in my Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams, is a presentation of the different heart diseases. One of the main focus of our study is the coronary heart disease which is the main cause of a heart attack. Here, I pointed out which part of the heart is affected and how it is causing the problem.

Our model comes with arteries showing the progression of fatty residue that limits the flow of blood flow.  See how Mavi discovered that there’s not enough space for the blood to flow when the walls of the artery is covered with fats.

Now his question is, can he still eat fatty foods? Now that’s another story and will be included in my Circulatory System post next month.

By the way, if you wish to demonstrate this with your kids, you can either use a straw or a hose, tissue rolls can also be used, and for the fatty residue Playdoh would be best.

And that’s about it, our human heart study.  I hope you find this post helpful!

Materials Used:

• Cardiovascular System Bundle Pack, this is the bundle that includes Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams, The Human Heart learning pack, and The Cardiovascular System
• Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams
• The Human Heart
• The Cardiovascular System

Where to buy Heart Model (US):

• Tedco Human Heart Anatomy
• Learning Resources Human Heart Model
• Heart Conditions Model

Where to buy Heart Model (UK/Europe):

• Eason’s  (if not available online, visit the store)
• Hamley’s  (if not available online, visit the store)
• 4D Human Heart Anatomy
• Learning Resources Human Heart

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Letter E: Parts of the Body Unit Activities

Last week, I put up a body parts unit study for Vito with emphasis on the letter E.  I’d like to share some of the materials and activities I prepared for him, of which he truly enjoyed.

1.  Recognition of body parts.

Vito knows most of his body parts so I introduced our Body Parts Cards to him for abstract presentation.  The cards were used for identification, but in different ways. 

• I would show the card and ask “what’s this?” Vito would answer and at the same time point to that part of his body.
• I used the doll for identification (3rd person) like “where is the dolly’s hair?”
• I could see him at times looking at the cards and imitate the picture.  So cute!

We are using my The Parts of the Body cards which you can get from here.

2.  Letter E objects

I’ve got three objects for our letter e:  eye, elephant and egg.  I so love this method! To expand the child’s vocabulary, learn phonics and letters all at the same time!

Vito always goes to this tray and would give me the object and say its name.  As for letter e, I love that he can remember the sound of ‘e’ whenever he encounters this in books! How amazing!

3.  Writing using our Egg shaped crayons

We are using Crayola here.

4.  Tracing the body

Oh yes, this was fun! Mavi participated as well!      

                            

5.  Letter E for egg

So he worked on peeling the eggshells…

and devoured the egg!

                        

And we later on used the eggshell in our letter E craft.

 

6.  Making a face

I cut out some different shapes, used a yarn for the hair and paper plate for the head and we have this cute face!  Vito was happy enough to wipe out all the glue as well.

7.  Body Parts Puzzle

Yes, if there’s one time that a little toddler can do with body parts is to start using a simple dress-up bear puzzle, with head, body and legs portion and being emphasized.  He couldn’t fit perfectly the pieces yet but he knows exactly where to  put the head, limb and legs.  We’ll do more of this!

And that’s about our activities for learning the body parts.  Don’t forget to pin this for later!

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