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Enhancing Anatomy Through Games

In my previous post The Human Body, I touched on the Kids Health website that encouraged kids to learn more about their bodies through entertainment. Why is this so effective? Simple, we gravitate towards fun.  It seems that our very souls need this to feel alive.

While there are many wonderful ways of doing this, bringing in quality games and lab-work into the classroom are two ways to liven things up. You will be instilling a love of learning and all you’ll need is your computer. These are my three favorites:

• The BBC’s interactive games – You need a flash player for this one but here you’ll find the “Organs Game”, “Muscles Game”, “Skeleton Game”, “Senses Challenge”, “Nervous System Game” and their “Puberty Demo”.   Cool stuff.
• The Anatomy Arcade – As they admit, these games “aren’t really educational, but are pretty fun and have an anatomical/medical flavor to them.”  However, they do have two that you can play online that I would consider VERY educational.  They are the:
  • Poke-A-Muscle game and
  • Whack-A-Bone

Both of these games will leave your student with a very good basic knowledge of the bones and muscles.

You might want to mute the muscles game though because the robotic voice was very annoying to me.  Both are available for purchase to schools or individual classes without the side ads.

• Lastly, Neuroscience for Kids is a nice resource for more games as well as other ideas for activities to liven things up.  These include outside games, coloring books, lesson plans, modeling ideas and other fun, fun, fun!

Speaking of neuroscience, here is a wonderful comparison of the difference between the Circulatory and Lymphatic systems.  A more comprehensive guide to how neurons work is found here… but I digress.  Enjoy!