Kaja has been on an anatomy kick lately, and I've been looking for some good hands-on ways to engage her interest. I've been seeing a lot of really cool felt anatomy sets on Pinterest, and I thought I'd make my own from random felt scraps laying around.
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| Ah, the digestive system. Her favorite part! She has to feed her "patient" once it's put together! |
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| We still have a ways to go for the cardio/pulmonary system... |
I couldn't find a pattern, so I made my own. I guess you could just trace an image from an anatomy book, but it's hard to find one good resource for that (and if you use multiple images, you have to scale them), so I'm posting my pattern, in case anyone else wants to try! The images are at the bottom of this page.
Here are the awesome things that inspired my project:
This was the first one I found, and I love how detailed the organs are!
Here is the printed felt set that we had when I was a kid.
This very cool person made an anatomy DOLL with removable organs. She even published a free pattern! How cool is that?! I appreciated her suggestion to start with smallest/most detailed part and scale and size everything else to fit. That made my project much more manageable!
And here are some other clever ideas that I may have to try soon:
Life-sized felt organs that will "stick" to your clothes,
this anatomy apron, or this version, or make your own!
As an added bonus, I sized the organs to fit over a 2-page body diagram in one of Kaja's favorite lift-the-flap body books. So if you're looking for an educational book to go with the set, I'd recommend Usborne's "See Inside Your Body."
Bones: Skull, spine/pelvis, ribs, collarbones, humerus (2), ulna/radius (2), femur(2), tibia/fibia(2).
Digestive: esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine
Cardiopulmonary: trachea, lungs (2), heart
Waste/other: liver, kidneys(2), bladder, pancreas (with gallbladder attached), spleen, and Brain!
Here are the patterns. Click on the image to view and download. Each one is sized for an 8.5x11" sheet of paper. When you go to print the image, just select the "fill entire paper"option for scale in the print menu.
For the body silhouette, I assembled the skeleton on a large piece of felt and used a piece of chalk to trace an outline around it. Pretty simple, really, and the chalk just rubs right off! :) I also used a sharpie to detail a few of the organs, shown on the pattern with dotted lines (small intestine and heart).
For the body silhouette, I assembled the skeleton on a large piece of felt and used a piece of chalk to trace an outline around it. Pretty simple, really, and the chalk just rubs right off! :) I also used a sharpie to detail a few of the organs, shown on the pattern with dotted lines (small intestine and heart).
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| Skeleton |
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| Cardio-pulmonary |
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| Internal organs |
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| Skull/brain |
