Human Body Unit: The Hand

Our Study of the Human Hand

Why do we have so many bones in our hand?

 We talked about the fact that there are 27 bones in the hand. First, to demonstrate why this is important I did an activity we had done a couple years ago. We pretended that we just had one bone per finger by taping popcycle sticks to their fingers.  Then they had to pick up beads. They found they could do it if they scooped up the beads

The Bones of the Hand:
Next, we did the wonderful idea I picked up from Almost Homeschoolers. They actually used bits of colored dough and baked their hands together. We used icing instead.

 

We used the bones of the hand packet from Homeschool Bits which I got on sale back in August for 25 cents. That is the colored hand you see in this picture and the first picture posted above.  I think the hand study-pack is now 50 cents.

X-Ray of the Hand and other Activities

We worked on a couple of the experiments we have from The Young Scientist Club. I got the ready-made experiments from NOEO science. (I did not buy their entire curriculum, I just bought the set of five experiment kits as this was one of the best prices I found on the Internet.) I'm adding in those experiments as we get to them throughout the year. The experiment below (also from the kit) shows the ball and socket bones.

 

Why do we need a thumb?

We got this hand-claw kit earlier this summer from another family.  We talked about why it's so important to have a thumb. Before we attached the thumb, we tried to pick things up with just the fingers.

It was pretty hard, though the kids realized they could squeeze their fingers together (making a scissoring motion) to pick smaller things up.

 But when the thumb was added, how easy it was!

And that was pretty much it for this part of our human body unit.