Hands-on Fun with Montessori-Inspired Human Skeleton Activities

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Many young children find the human skeleton scary, especially if the skeleton images they’ve seen are ones at Halloween. I love having a skeleton unit (mini or large) before Halloween to help ease any fears about skeletons and to give children a better understanding of skeletons in general.

Even though we have our monthly theme, I have a mini skeleton unit on our practical life/language/cultural shelf for my 3¾-year-old granddaughter, Zoey. She’s had a great time with the hands-on skeleton activities already!

Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links (at no cost to you). This post uses a material from one of my sponsors, Montessori Print Shop.

Activities for Our Montessori-Inspired Human Skeleton Shelf

Practical Life, Language, and Culture Shelf with Skeleton Work

You’ll have your shelves set up for whatever is best for your family or classroom. Because of limited space in my home, I have one shelving unit with my monthly themed activities and a mixture of curriculum areas in my other shelves.

Our mini skeleton unit is on our practical life/language/cultural shelves. Here are the skeleton activities I have:

Wonderful You! book in book basket (a fun, pop-up Christian book we had from when my daughter, Christina, was little)
Skeleton model from Melissa & Doug Magnetic Human Body Anatomy Play Set With 24 Magnetic Pieces and Storage Tray
Basket with skeleton nomenclature cards from the Montessori at Home eBook and Materials Bundle (over $60 worth of materials available exclusively at Living Montessori Now for only $15.95!) Note: If you only want the skeleton nomenclature cards, you can get those from Montessori Print Shop for $3.00.
Janod Body Magnet puzzle (with skeleton pieces in a basket)
Hape Your Body 5-Layer Wooden Puzzle Girl (There’s also a boy puzzle.)
The Human Body Book (a favorite of Zoey’s since she was a toddler)
The Skeleton Inside You book (on middle shelf)

Shelf with Montessori-Inspired Skeleton Work

Zoey enjoyed all the activities, although she especially loves the 5-layer wooden puzzle girl. The Melissa and Doug magnetic puzzle and Janod magnetic puzzle are both fun, but only one layer can be used at a time. Zoey especially likes putting all the layers in the puzzle and talking about each body system.

Excited about Her Completed Skeleton Work

Zoey also loved using the skeleton nomenclature cards with the Janod skeleton puzzle. This puzzle is more challenging than the other two, so Zoey was especially proud of herself for putting it together without difficulty. Then I had her match the pictures of 9 of the types of bones in the skeleton. She was very proud of her work! I only gave her 9 types of bones for the first day, but I’ll be adding more as she becomes comfortable with all those names.

There are 25 pairs of cards, so these are great for a wide variety of ages! Older children can read the words to match the words with the correct bones. If you like to have younger children match the shape of the words, that’s another option, too.

Did Zoey find skeletons less scary by the time we finished our first day’s work? Yes, she did! She told her grandpa and parents that “skeletons aren’t scary. They’re just bones. But they’re a little bit scary.” LOL! Hopefully, they won’t be scary at all by the time Halloween arrives!

The Montessori at Home! eBook and Materials Bundle Available Exclusively at Living Montessori Now – with new, reduced price!!!

Montessori Print Shop, always one of my very favorite Montessori suppliers, partnered with John Bowman in offering 21 gorgeous Montessori materials in a bundle together with the Montessori at Home! eBook! You can now get over $60 worth of materials in this bundle for only $15.95! (It was originally $19.95. Because some of the links in the eBook have changed … not that many for a 512 page book … we’ve reduced the price from its original $10.95 to only $6.95! It continues to be an amazing resource for parents wanting to use Montessori at home. The bundle price was reduced by the same amount to give everyone a very special deal.)

Here’s the list of 21 printable Montessori materials included in the bundle:

Phases of the Moon (3-part cards & chart)
Animals of the Continents
Continents 3-Part Cards
Land & Water Form Photo Book
World – Control Maps, Masters and Labels
Moveable Alphabet – Print – (includes full instructions)
Sentence Cards – Step 1 – Set 1
Word and Picture Cards – Step 1 – Read Pictures
1-100 Math Series
Geometric Matching Cards
Geometric Solids 3-Part Cards – Blue
Skeleton Nomenclature Cards
Tree Nomenclature Cards
Phonics Sound and Picture Sorting
Association of Objects
What Does Not Belong
The Five Senses
Plant or Animal?
Animals and Their Names
Color Grading Cards
Metal Insets – Shape Outlines

More Hands-on Fun with Montessori-Inspired Skeleton Activities

Free Skeleton Printables and Montessori-Inspired Skeleton Activities

Montessori-Inspired Skeleton Unit

Human Body and Kids’ Halloween Activities Pinterest Boards

Follow Deb @ Living Montessori Now’s board Human Body Unit Study on Pinterest.
You’ll find more human skeletal system activities of all kinds on my Human Body Pinterest Board as well as more Halloween skeleton activities on my Kids’ Halloween Activities Board.

What does your child think of skeletons?

Learn more about my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to. Teach Grace and Courtesy! I’m also one of the coauthors of the book Learn with Play – 150+ Activities for Year-round Fun & Learning!

The Montessori at Home! eBook and Montessori at Home! eBook and Materials Bundle are AMAZING resources! You can learn more about them here. Buy them in the Living Montessori Now shop.

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