Blue Tube, Bones, and Skin

We bought a puzzle awhile back, thinking that soon the kids would be big enough to work it. It got put away for a few months and just recently returned to the playroom. Tarzan, Aurora, and O'Malley are now LOVING it. They still need a little help with it, so I do it eight or ten times a day while we sit and talk about it and they hand me pieces.

I've never seen this brand before, but now that I'm looking it up, there's a whole set. Very cool. There's even a pregnant lady one. We have the girl layered puzzle. The bottom layer is the skeleton, then organs, muscles, skin, and clothes. It's led to so many interesting discussions and teaching them about body systems. They started out with thinking the skeleton was gross- I guess their only frame of reference for it is Halloween and gory stuff. So we talked about how everybody has bones inside and how they protect your squishy parts. :) Tarzan is excited about his skull to protect his squishy brain and goes around knocking himself on the head and yelling about his hard skull. It's pretty funny.

O'Malley's favorite is the organ layer. It shows all the main organs with the systems in different colors. You can trace each color through and see the functions. I love it. At dinner the other night he choked on his food and then told me how his food went down the blue tube to his lungs, instead of going down the green tube to his belly like it was supposed to.

We haven't talked much about muscles except to poke their biceps and talk about how muscles make you strong.

The skin layer weirded them out a bit at first too. Such the stigma on being nekkid. The puzzles are anatomically correct so we talk about how it's a girl and how everybody has skin to hold all that other stuff inside.

I love finding cool stuff like this. I never would have thought about teaching preschoolers the digestive system, but with this puzzle they really get it, on their level. It's so fun!