Human Body Systems

THis is a fun body unit
At the beginning, you help each child trace their body onto large mural paper. (full body size)
Then, after you do each part of the body, you have them add that part to the boy.

For example - we talk about the five senses and do some hands on activities for each one - and talk about how our brain interprets the information we get from the senses. We then add the brain, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands to the body tracing.

Then we talk about our bones. I bring in x-rays of bones, talk about how are bones gives us shape, support, and protection. Then we draw pictures of us without bones. I then bring in an egg that has been soaking in vinegar. (IT dissolves the calcium in the egg) and the egg is soft and rubbery - the children touch it and we talk about what happens to our bones if we don't get calcium. I then have bone shapes cut out and we glue those onto the body tracings.

For muscles - we exercise, listen to our heart beat, etc. I then show them how a muscle pulls the bones to make them move. Then we use red crepe paper for mucles and add that to our bodies.

We talk about the stomach - how it is like a bag that holds our food until the rest of our body needs it. We get a plastic bag, mush up bread, and stick it inside the bag. and tape that to our body tracings.

We then talk about our skin and the functions of our skin. - i cut skin shapes out of celaphone (I use different colors of celaphane) and we add that to our bodies.

When we talk about hair - i bring in a wig with oil in it and we touch it and talk about how our hair is if we don't wash it, then we wash the wig and feel the hair. we add hair to our bodies.

Then we add clothes and I write something great about each kid on their bodies.

I have completed body maps with my first graders. It is a daring mission when you start out, and everything must be explained in full detail to the students. The student create full size body maps (they will need help tracing and cutting out their bodies) Then, each time you teach about the different body system, you color, cut out a blackline organ and place the organ on the body map. (The prep work includes making outlines of each organ) A sample exercise: Circulatory system- you may simply ask the students to do 20 jumping jacks and then feel their chest. Explain to them that they have a heart and that heart works to pump the blood. You would be surprised how little students know about their own bodies. The other systems include digestive system (there is a great magic school bus video on digestion "For Lunch")nervous system, respiratory system, skeletal and muscular. For the skeletal system, we place bones on one leg and then for the muscular system, we place muscles on the other leg. The show joints, we used paper fasteners after we cut joints on the elbows and wrists. I hope all of this helps. If you need any other help, you can send me an e-mail.

I just finished a unit with my class on the human body. We covered digestion, circulation, nervous system, respiratory system, and bones and muscles.

We watched several Bill Nye videos on the body - they are great. I have worksheets that I made to go with the videos as well as quizzes/tests. I had speakers come in (parent volunteers, but it's possible you could get a local doctor if none of your parents can help). Email me and I can send you the stuff I have saved (I can just send them as attachments). The kids had a lot of fun with it. Plus I found some great stuff at the local teacher store - a really cool human body flip chart, and a book with projects where you can cut out and make all of the body systems.

I teach fifth, but I am sure the concepts are the same. There are so many human body resources out there, this is the best unit to teach because you can make it hands on. Have the kids look at cells under microscopes... cheek cell is an animal cell and a plant cell from an onion...they can see the parts of a cell, if there is the highest magnification possible... then you can go on from there. I always start with bones and muscles, then to circulatory, respiratory and finally digestive. We don't teach nervous system.... Have them make a skeleton with fasteners and paper models of bones... have them look at x rays and determine where a broken bone is, how it could be fixed. We dissect a chicken leg from the grocery store, a leg quarter to be exact. They love looking at the tendons, ligaments, muscles or meat.... there is so much inquiry there. With circulatory we do heart rate activities, and coloring to see the way the blood travels to the heart and then to the lungs and back... With respiratory, we make models of the human lung with balloons, a 2 liter soda bottle and a straw as the trachea.. you can do so much.. I am going on too long, but have more ideas.... email me if you would like some more... CHRIS

I just finished my student teaching. One of the things we did was learn about all the different body systems. We reinforced this with making our own Frankenstein Man ( it was around Halloween). Anyway, we created the internal organs from clay. We used a small box placed inside his shirt, we placed and glued the organs inside the box. Each student got to make an organ. The students could open Frank's shirt, and view his heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, galbladder etc. Needlesstosay, the actual making of the organs with the hands on experiences, helped to reinforce all they had learned. Other classrooms came in to see our "creation", the students got even more reinforcement explaining to the other students. I hope this helps I had meant to answer this post, just never had the time. Good Luck Let me know if you could use this.

I took my class to the library in groups of 4. They researched a different part of the body and then made fairground rides to represent each organ. For example for the brain they made a waterloop ride where they visited sound, sight, touch areas. They researched it really well and their presentations were awesome. I wish I had filmed it. Just a suggestion

I'm not sure if this would work with fifth grade or not. I teach third grade and am in the middle of my human body unit. I began the unit with a read aloud of Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body. I have a book full of human body projects to make. These include a brain hat, digestion poster, cell mobile, circulation wheel, etc. I have the book at school, but will look up the title, if you are interested. I also read BB on Digestion and Energy, Growing and Changing, Skin, etc. and have the children write down five facts from each book in their science journals. I will be showing a Bill Nye video on the human body next week and then we will be looking at our epithelial cells under a microscope. To wrap up the unit, I have the children make lifesize bodies on chart paper. They color and cut out printouts of body parts and label them. Then paste red and blue yarn throughout the body to represent arteries and blood vessels. The children really love this unit!

Trace bodies on butcher paper and draw in one of the systems by groups.

Turn the campus into a cardiovascular system with the students moving around the system as blood components carrying oxygen, nutrients, and wastes made of paper or balloons. White blood cells also fight infection and platelets form clots to stop bleeding.

Make model hinge joints by taping popsicle sticks together and use string as muscles to make the joints work.

John

I teach 4th. I have used the Magic School Bus inside the Human Body. Here is what I did with it. We of course read out of our boring Science books first about the organ systems. Then I read aloud the Magic School Bus Inside the Human body. I also showed the video. We created life size bodies by tracing ourselves onto big white paper, then we drew and cut out the organs and placed them in the correct place and labeled them on the paper. We also wrote stories called Microscopic Me. We imagined that we got shrunk down to mini size and went exploring in the human body. These were published pieces that I laminated for the kids and we placed them in the classroom library. The kids still read them while they have free time or silent reading. This book and video enhanced thier learning as well as being cute.

The other one I used was the Beehive one. We learned about bees/flowers. The kids did several assignments including making a styrophoam(sp) model of a bee and labeling the parts ...some kids wanted to make a model of a flower so I allowed them to do that and label the parts of that, too.

I have my students make a "book" We take a large piece of construction paper (I think it's twice the size of normal paper, the kind that is usually in the art room) and fold it so the ends meet in the middle and there are two flaps that open like "french doors" for the cover. Then I give them a transparency with the outline of the human body on it. They draw all the organs of a particular system inside with sharpies. They use different colors for each organ. Then on note cards they write the word of the organ in the same color they drew the organ in, and the definition (this makes it color coordinated) They do this for all 4 systems we covered, and then the put them in the book overlapping each other. This allows you to see all the organs in the body, and you can look at each transparency seperately to see just one system. The note cards are placed on the side flaps and the transparency in the middle. They look great when they are all finished. I hope this makes some sense...it is Saturday morning and my brain is still a little foggy :). Let me know if you need more clarification.

I hope this helps.

Maureen

called The Body Book by Donal M. Silver and Patricia J. Wayne. It is a hands on model making book. I used it when we did the five senses and it was great. Make the model yourself first because some of the instructions aren't that good. It includes the the digestive system, heart, skeletal, respitory system, heart and urinary system. I found it at Lakeshore Learning Store. It is a scholastic book. My kids loved the hands on activities and scored well on their test. Good luck!

One thing you could do minimally related to the human body is measure each student's height and enter name, feet, and inches in a spreadsheet. Add a column to the right of name to convert the height to inches (or centimeters). Sort by height and create a graph. Have the students line up producing a living graph and take a picture. A possible extension is to trace silhouettes in this height order on 4 foot wide newsprint.

Something that relates to the human body a little better is pulse rate. One reading when sitting quietly (if that's possible) and another right after being fairly active will give 2 values to plot for each student and can be graphed in several different ways. I think you could do individual graphs that showed where the beat occurred over a minute (or less) on average. For example, at 60 beats per minute, values at .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, .6, .7, .8, and .9 would be 0 and the value a 1.0 would be 1, etc. Showing the resting and active heart rates in different colors would compare the rates in a way closer to an EKG.

That last option is a little ambitious, but if you're still with me, how about labeling body parts? I've done something similar with a map. By taking a map outline with a transparent fill, I was able to enter a formula in the appropriate place for each geographic area. I've done it with counties in Florida, but it could use states in the US, countries in South America, etc. The formulae take values from a table in the spreadsheet and display them with the county names. It also takes a title from the table. If I paste data from the 2000 census into the table, a US map would become a US population map. By pasting in the names of official flowers, it would become a state flower map. This could be done with a body "map" labeling parts with numbers or letters within the diagram and having students name the parts (or choose a name from a list) with entries by the letters or numbers to the left and/or right of the diagram. The formulae would cause the same name to appear within the diagram. It could also indicate whether the answer was correct if you wanted to do that.

I have broken the class into to smaller groups. Each group gets a system, nervous , digestive, etc...
they can trace one person on large bulletin board paper, draw the important parts of the system, be able to describe the important parts, teach the class about the parts, make a quiz for the class, they give the test and correct it. They are in charge. You act like the facillitator. Use Magic School Bus human body to help you.

:s)