Anatomy and my body – Montessori unit

The body is a vast subject to explore with your children. It’s a recurrent obsession with my two children since they are very little. And it’s a recurrent topic in the Montessori playgroup.

(below, some of the activities we have done, from left to right, top to bottom: compare my own body size to the skeleton jigsaw, make a skeleton with playdough with the model, skeleton jigsaw, drawing body part on body outline, building the skeleton, Mr Potatoes parts with playdough, how I present my body 5 layers jigsaw)

How to present my body 5 layers jigsaw

Here a few books on the topic that we are currently reading and a few of the material I use with my children and in the playgroup.

• The Human body – A shine a light book : This book is to be used with a light torch and it’s pretty amazing, you basically shine the light behind each page to see through and discover part of our body (like what helps you to run? muscles…). For this book, just make sure you are well organised and that you have a light torch available!
• This jumbo floor jigsaw of the skeleton is great to learn the different bones. It’s quite easy to build even for young preschooler. My son likes to compare his size to the skeleton size.
• Inside your outside by Tish Rabe (the author who has written books in the way of Dr Seuss after Dr Seuss death 😉 ). I would say, it’s more for children over 5 and very interesting to introduce all about anatomy to your children.
• Wooden body jigsaw, this is a 5 layers body jigsaw. For the youngest ones, I work with one layer at a time. For a long time, my daughter was afraid of the organs layers as she didn’t like to see the brain so we skipped that part (I’m talking about her when she was around 3). Building the 5 layers all mixed up is quite challenging but 4 years old children start to have enough concentration to do it. There is a boy and girl version and there is also a pregnant mummy version that we used a lot when I was expecting my son. Lidl in UK has this kind of toys available from time to time and much cheaper that the version I have linked above 😉

Last found at TK Maxx (that shop is a killer for the teacher in me!)

• Human body FACTivity: it targets the 8+ child but my 5 years old loved to build the skeleton with me and enjoys being read this book at bedtime. It’s full of activities to do and I’m planning to copy the activity pages to keep a master copy.

Now here are a few resources on my wishlist:

• Plastic organs Toob 
• Human body sticker book: I admit we have a passion (aka addiction) for sticker book 😉