Learning about Vertebrates - Animal Skeletons

We've been learning about animal skeletons! I'm not sure how we fell into this topic but it's been a lot of fun. For a few months now we've been loving Whose Bones? board book it's one of Otto's (4yrs) favourites. The pages open out, so at first, you can only see the skeleton and the child can guess what animal it belongs to. Then we open the page out and see the whole animal and find some facts about each animal.  

My older children love these anatomy models and I've found them useful for teaching Otto about skeletons. This is the Giraffe anatomy model (AU here). There are similar anatomy models are for different animals.

If you have any Montessori Zoology puzzles you may be familiar with this one. This cute Frog puzzle (AU) shows the frog skeleton underneath the puzzle pieces.

This matching game has been well used. The child matches the skeleton to the animal. After a few tries, Otto finds it simple but initially it really made him think and analyse the body shapes. This is a printable that I downloaded and printed at home using the Animals And Their Skeletons Matching -Montessori Printable Cards.

We've used animal Xrays on the light table. The Xrays work ok without the light table, we can use them on our white table or with white paper behind them, or use them with a torch. They have the image of the animal on one side and the skeleton/Xray on the other side. Xrays like the snake are super interesting and tell us a lot about each animal like how it eats, how tall it is, how many legs it has or how it moves. 

Sorting Vertebrates and Invertebrates using our Transparent Sorting Mat c/o Modern Teaching Aids. 

We are still in lockdown, but where and when we can, a Museum visit offers an opportunity to see many life-size skeletons up close!

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