If you enjoy these skeletal system projects, you are sure to want to check out our other science projects for kids:
- Electronics Project for Kids - DIY Game
- Crystals - How to Grow Crystals
- Dancing Raisins Experiment
- How to Make a Lava Lamp
- Why do Leaves Change Colors
- Homemade Battery Experiment
- Pop Rock Science Experiment
- Squishy Circuits
- Homemade Weather Vane & Compass Activity
Skeletal System
Human Spine
Before we built our human spine I tried to help them visualize two things:
- Without the cartilage disks our bones would get chipped (I demonstrated that by rubbing two rigatoni together and they were able to see the wear and tear on the "bone")
- Without 33 independent bones working together we couldn't bend and twist like we do (I put a sword down their back to be there solid bone vertebrae and they tried to do simple things like bend over - not so easy!!)
To help my kids understand what the spine looks like and how it functions we created this fun spine model:
- pipe cleaner as the spinal cord
- layers of rigatoni pasta as vertebrae (there should be 33 if you make it to scale)
- in between each vertebrae we put a life saver gummy to represent the cartilage disks
Layers of Bone
To help the kids visualize all the different layers in our bones we made the cross section of a bone. Here is what we used:
- red & blue pipe cleaners to represent blood vessels
- red straw to put the pipe cleaners in to represent red bone marrow
- yellow pool noodle to represent the spongy bone
- Lego Duplo to represent the hard smooth compact bone (the part you actually see in a typical skeleton)
- Gauze Wrap to represent the Periosteum (we drew blood vessels in the Periosteum with blue and red markers)
Skeletal System Printables
To complete your unit on the skeletal system you will want to grab our FREE Skeletal System Printables to learn about not only the bones and joints, but fun and interesting facts too!
Make learning about the bones that make up our skeletal system fun with this FREE Printable Life-size Human Body Project.