Bones: Skeletons and How They Work

Bones: Skeletons and How They Work
written and illustrated by Steve Jenkins, 2010, New York : Scholastic Press. (0545046513).

Author/Illustrator Website: http://www.stevejenkinsbooks.com/

Media: paper collage

Awards and Honors: A Junior Library Guild Selection for Fall 2010, A Society of Illustrators Original Art Show choice

Annotation: A creative look at bones and skeletons of all shapes and sizes, what they do, and how they do it. 

Personal Reaction: 
     This is a wonderful picture book for children who are fascinated by bones or for educators to enrich lessons on the skeleton (human and otherwise). Steve Jenkins employs his trademark paper collage illustrations to explain how bones protect, support, and enable movement for all vertebrates. Cream collage skeletons on boldly colored solid pages are attention grabbers and Jenkins uses fold out double spreads to great effect in illustrating some spectacular full skeletons. One really neat feature of the illustations is that they are done to scale so that the reader can compare the sizes of various bones and animals. Jenkins includes additional facts, stories, history and science relating to bones at the end of the book. This is a book that elementary age kids (especially boys) will want to read again and again.

Curriculum Connection: Elementary school biology

Lesson Plan:

Subject Area:             
Biology

Suggested Grade Level:     
4-5

Lesson Title:             
Bones

Time:                 
1-2 hours

Materials/Equipment Required: 
- Bones: Skeletons and How They Work written and illustrated by Steve Jenkins
- modeling clay
- paper
- tape
- paper or plastic plates
- weights (wooden blocks)

Objectives: 
Students will learn about bones (the different types, how they protect the body, support it and allow it to move) and joints in the human body.

Suggested Procedure:         
Teacher will read aloud Bones: Skeletons and How They Work.

 Bone and Joint Activity:

1) Teacher will show students a picture of a bone pointing out the
         various parts of the bone, and reviewing important vocabulary. 

2) Students will create a clay model of the bone, labeling the parts
         of it.

3) Teacher will introduce the four joints of the human body. 

4) The teacher will demonstrate the movements of the joints. 

5) Students will brainstorm examples in the human skeletal system for each type of joint.

Bone Strength Activity:

1) Students will roll up half a sheet of letter-sized paper into a cylinder about 1 inch wide. They will make 3 of these.2) Students will stand the bones up on their ends and place a paper plate on top of the bones.
3) Students will begin to add weights (wooden blocks) to the plate.
4) Students will count how many blocks the plate can hold before the “bones" collapse.
5) Students will roll 3 more sheets of paper as tightly as they can so that there is no hollow section 
6) Students will stand these "bones" up as before placing the same plate on top of them.
7) Students will place weights on top of the plate until they collapse.
8) Students will deduce what happened. Teacher will explain that hollow
bones were able to support more weight. Teacher will continue explaining that the large bones in our body are also hollow, which makes them strong so they can support more weight, but light, so it takes less energy to move them.