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My eldest daughter went through a stage of being interested in her body and how it worked at around 3 years old. That was a couple of years ago now and there has been no interest again until recently. Maybe it’s the age because there has been lots of questions from my 3 year old about her body lately.

‘Does your tongue have no bones?’

‘What are teeth made of?’

‘What’s inside a arm?’

‘What’s inside a eye?’

‘Is there microbes on my body?’

So here we are exploring what’s inside our bodies again! Interestingly, the inquisitiveness of my 3 year old has also captured my 5 year old’s interest again. She is keen to join in and learn too and I can see her building on her knowledge from the last time we learned about this topic. I find this happens so often, they become interested in a topic and learn as much as they can understand at that point until their interest wanes, only to revisit it in the future when they are a little older and ready to learn more. I am grateful that I can give them the time and space to do this and follow their natural curiosity.

We got started as we usually do when an interest arises. I compiled some resources for them to explore the topic in more depth, and put them on a shelf in the play room to be discovered. They were very interested and excited when they found them! We have started by looking at bones and what their role is in the body. Firstly we read the section on bones in our favourite body book, Usborne Look Inside: Your Body

They both love this book. It’s written in simple language that they both can understand and they love discovering what is under all the flaps. They have learnt so much from this book!

Next they assembled this life-size toddler skeleton which I found from ‘Spell Outloud’. They both worked together to get all the pieces in the right place, and named him ‘Cheeky Mr Skeleton Man’.

Next we wanted to label the bones. I had printed off some labels for the major bones from Confessions of a homeschooler, and also these human skeleton 3-part cards from Montessori Workjobs. Although some of the words were a bit tricky to read the girls were both able to match the words on the labels to the words on the cards to find out which bone the label was for.

Skeleton man is now stuck on our wall in the play room and they enjoy pointing out all of the different bones.

The girls then came up with the idea of making a skeleton out of play dough, so we made some natural coloured play dough together. My 5 year old concentrated on making the skeleton while looking at Mr Skeleton on the wall to figure out what it needed to look like. My 3 year old started making bones but then decided to make ‘Everest Mountain’ instead.

She was so proud of herself for making this skeleton and said to me ‘Wow, I didn’t think I could do that!’ We have decided to keep it on a shelf and add more to it as we learn about different parts of the body.

We have recently bought an iPad and this opened up another avenue for learning about the body. The first app I downloaded was ‘The Human Body’ by Tinybop and it is AMAZING! The girls are loving it. Here they are looking at the bones. They are also able to take them all out and see what happens to the body without bones, and then put them all back in again one by one.

Lastly, we traced around their body and painted in the white bones. We will add more and more to it as we learn about other things.

We have had such a fun week learning all about bones. Watching their faces light up when they learn something new is priceless. I am hoping their interest in the body continues and we can learn about all the other areas, but as always, it is up to them!