Human Body, Anyone?

If you are a 5th grade teacher, you probably do a fair amount of teaching about the human body.

Sometimes it's informal, like: "Please remember the importance of a shower and deodorant every day!" If you teach upper grades, you KNOW what I'm talking about...

And sometimes, it's more formal learning about all of the body's amazing systems and how they interact.

We have just wrapped up our study of the human body in our science class. In order to learn about each system, their important organs and functions and how they all interact, we started out by thinking about our prior knowledge and then questions we had. We started with the digestive system, but you could start with whichever one you want (or the one your district suggests).

Throughout our research, we used several free online resources that I wanted to share with all of the awesome Fifth Grade Freebies followers!

Discovery Kids

The Discovery Kids website has great articles about each of the major body systems. They are fact-filled and interesting to read. You can even print them out if technology isn't readily available at your school! Once you are on the site, just search for the system you want and look for the articles!

Kids Health

Kids Health is a website with TONS, and I mean TONS of information. There are articles for parents, kids, teens and resources for teachers. They have great videos too, with activities and printables.

Biology4Kids

What I love about Biology4Kids is the articles have a video at the end of each one that is related to the system you are reading about. For example, after the article about the skeletal system there is a cool video about bionic limbs! The kids loved watching it.

Computer Simulations

One of the kids' favorite things to do during this research phase was the computer simulations. The one the 5th graders liked the best was the digestive system. They could pick any food from the table and ride along through the digestive process. I'll let you see for yourself if the simulation goes ALL the way through...

These were just a few of the websites and resources out there to help kids access information about the human body!

What resources do you use to teach about the human body in your classroom?