The Dolphins Learn About Bones

At ICP we try to practice emergent curriculum. This means that the ideas for our learning often emerge from the interests, questions, activities, and discoveries of the children and adults in class. One day a Dolphin boy came in and he was talking about his bones. We asked the next friend what he knew about bones, and so on. There seemed to be a lot of interest in learning more about our bones.

We read stories about our bones and our skeletons, and we built a skeleton puzzle. We also looked at x-rays of bones.

We made our own "x-rays" by pairing up with a partner and painting either hands and feet with white paint.

Then we printed these onto black paper. It was fun, and tickly!

Look at this creative skeleton!

We looked at a variety of different bones. This one was broken and you can still see the marrow inside it.

There are curved bones, and straigh bones, and different shaped ones.

There are also some animal skulls. Several teeth have fallen out of the skulls, and it was like a puzzle trying to figure out where they go.

We made different kinds of x-ray machines from different materials. We brought animals and babies in to be x-rayed and bandaged.

This boy was a nurse who turned out to be very helpful with the x-ray machine.

The x-rays showed where the bone was broken. Even the crab got an x-ray.