With so much to cover we had to pick and choose for our Human Body Unit Study. I could have spent ages covering everything and still felt like we had to leave stuff out. You can be sure we will be revisiting the human body again!

For our human body unit study, we talked a lot about the layers of the human body or the human body systems. from bones to organs to muscles to nerves and all the things in between. We also touched a bit on diversity and the 5 senses

One of our favorite ways to make our human body unit study more relatable was to use our own bodies and point out the location of different body parts and using tools like a stethoscope to make concepts more concrete.

Books will always be a huge part of our homeschool unit studies

You can find all of the human body books that we used for our homeschool preschool human body unit study that we used in a separate post!  There were so many I just couldn’t put everything in one post.

Planning Homeschool Preschool Work Shelves 

When I’m planning a unit study, I tend to plan about 10-12 activities to have on our work shelf and I try to have two of each of five major categories. This lesson plan will last us 2-3 weeks of “school” time.

Language– this could be things like working with a movable alphabet or introducing new vocabulary with three-part cards or phonics games

Numbers – this could be working with our colored beads, our red and blue rods, bead hangers or math link cubes

Sensorial – this is where you’ll see a lot of the traditional Montessori sensorial materials, things like the brown stair and the pink tower, knobbed cylinders, and knobless cylinders, but we’ll also have things that will work on differentiating size or weight.

Fine motor – this is where you’ll see things like beating lacing, sewing, cutting, and tracing

Other – this category sort of acts as an overflow for game schooling (bingo and memory), puzzles, and sorting activities. Really this is just where I plug in a couple more activities that I really want to add to the shelf even if they overlap with other categories.

Depending on how in-depth and how interested your little learner is could dictate if you need a rotation with further work on the topic

I only prepared one lesson plan for this unit as Bitty wasn’t showing a TON of interest and I didn’t want to overwhelm her with too much info. So we kept it simple and I made lots of notes for what we could return to if she wanted to know more.

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Human Body Unit Study Works

For our shelf work for our human body unit study, I tried to focus on the systems that she would understand/relate to the most. Bones and organs were a big focus of our one-on-one lessons and blood/veins were a definite interest point of hers.

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Language Works

Body Part Words and Moveable Alphabet

A simple invitation with our Montessori moveable alphabet to do some writing using some body part cards as prompts

Blood Bag Writing

This was the home run of the human body unit study. Both the girls loved this thing. I took a gallon-sized ziplock and added a fair amount of clear hair gel and a few drops of red food gel. Smoosh it all together and then I taped the bag onto a cutting board. A super simple DIY that had them coming back again and again.

I presented it with our sandpaper letters (amazon option) with the intent that she would trace a sandpaper letter and then make the same letter in the gel bag

Number Works

Bone Spindle Box

This is a toy hack to create something similar to the traditional Montessori spindle box. A true Spindle Box’s purpose is to teach the concept of zero. So our hack isn’t perfect, but we were still able to work on quantity to number matching.

I presented the exact number of q-tip ‘bones’ to fill each spot and she counted as she filled them

Red Blood Cells Odds & Evens

This is a take on the classic Montessori Cards and Counters lesson. We used our DIY counting board and little red beads as blood cells for the counters. The goal was to show how even numbers have partners and odd numbers have a cell without a partner

Red & Blue Rods

a DIY version of the classic Red and Blue Rods. Bitty has definitely mastered the more sensorial side of the rods and now we are working on matching the number symbol to the correct rod

Sensorial Works

5 Senses Sorting

I gathered three things to match with each of the senses and she had to sort them based on what sense you used them with.

See: sunglasses, color paddle, and flashlight Hear: headphones, cymbals, jingle bell Smell: flower(with perfume sprayed on it), apple pie spice, lavender oil Taste: baby bottle, goldfish, candy Feel: sandpaper, makeup brush, playdough

Mystery Bag

Take on a classic Montessori work where you put a variety of objects into a bag and prompt them to describe what they are feeling in the bag and even take a guess at what the object might be. You can vary this work by putting matching pairs that they have to find or by making the objects more similar.

Knobless Cylinders

a classic Montessori sensorial material that works with the variations of width and length and the combination of those

Fine Motor Works

Squishy Human Body

The squishy human body came highly recommended for our human body unit study, and it did not disappoint! Bitty loved dating this apart piece by piece, laying them all out on the chart and then reassembling.

Layers of the Human Body

A layered puzzle that works with the different layers of the human body This was another surprise hit that I knew would be useful but I did not anticipate her using as much as she did!

Other Works

Stethoscope

We purchased a fairly cheap stethoscope that definitely was an improvement beyond a toy stethoscope but it was nearly impossible to hear any heartbeats. So if you are looking to be able to actually hear a heartbeat I would definitely reviews and find a slightly better model

Paper Brain Hat

Each week we talked about a couple of sections of the brain and what those sections controlled and then colored those and at the end, we assembled the hat

Organ Matching Printables

This was a simple printable work that I found online that just helped reinforce where the organs are in the body

Human Body Unit Study Tot School Works

A few of the activities that I put out on the shelf are very geared towards my 2 year old, in case we are working at the shelves when she is awake. In total transparency, we aren’t often over here in the mornings so these activities have been mostly ignored by Bean, but Bitty will occasionally go to them and that’s fine too!

Primary Color Drawers

This was a work that I was testing for Bean. I honestly was not sure if she could color match and was sort of shooting it more as a practical life fine motor work of opening the doors dropping the ring in that kind of thing.  It honestly went mostly ignored Bitty tinkered with it a little bit, but it was not a major hit.

Light table Xrays

I printed some x-ray images that I found online onto some tissue paper and then laminated them to make them sturdy enough to work with. This allowed a lot of light to pass through through with the printing. You did lose some detail so keep that in mind.  I then presented them with our light table just for them to explore and look at and make connections with. There was no real lesson with this work

Human Body Crafts and Sensory Play

I found crafts and sensory play hard to come by ideas for this unit study…There are a couple of ideas that seem like everyone does but beyond that, not a lot of inspirations to be found for our human body unit study…Here are a few of the ideas that we tried or that I had on our backup list if we needed an activity.

Human Body Unit Study Craft Ideas

• Organ Coloring sheets
• q-tip xrays
• fingerprint People
• Loose Parts Self Portraits
• Organ Stamps

Human Body Unit Study Sensory Play

• Heart Model
• Lung Model
• Blood Waterbead Sensory Bin
• Human Body Systems Playdough Mats
• Heart Cookies

Need more ideas for a preschool Human Body Unit Study?!?

Then you should definitely check out my Homeschool Preschool Human Body Unit Study on Pinterest! It’s full of these ideas and so many more others that we just didn’t have time for!

We will defenitly be revisiting our human body unit study!

Something that I love about homeschooling is the cyclical nature of lessons. You cover things and just know you’ll have to come back to cover more and be more in-depth. So without ought a doubt we will be back to do more with a new human body unit study at some point!

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