Anatomy Art Projects

Published: February 11, 2013

Oooh, science and art make me all happy. What happens when kids make art based on the human body and perhaps absorb some of that information?

I recently heard from Aruna from Young Yoga Masters. She incorporates an art project into her kids’ yoga camps and was wondering if I had any anatomy art projects up my sleeve.

Currently, she’s having the kids trace their bodies on large pieces of paper, and gluing on everyday objects to represent the innards- (string as intestines, macaroni for the brain, etc.) I think this is pretty brilliant, but she wanted to know if I had any other ideas. I had some vague ideas and told her I’d knock them around inside my noggin and get back to her.

Naturally, I turned to the internet. I found some projects online, and came up with a few others on my own. I hope some of these inspire some ideas!

 

anatomy art projects for kids

I love this simple spine idea from The Crafty Classroom– she has these listed as the materials: Needle/Thread: Egg Carton, Noodle. I’m assuming it’s a small foam noodle that you string through the egg carton pods somehow- to show how the spine is flexible.

 

anatomy art projects for kids

Body tracings are done on black paper so kids can paint on bones. I like this because it gives them the sense of scale and they have to really look at an image of a skeleton to see how to paint the bone shapes- but it’s also fun and probably quick once the shapes are cut out. They look great hanging all together, too.

 

 

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I couldn’t believe my eyeballs when I saw this. Gillian Higgins is an equine massage therapist who paints horse anatomy on their bodies to help students remember all of those 700 muscles. I suppose this wouldn’t be the most appropriate project for kids, but how could I not include it?

 

skeleton printout

The University of Texas at Austin has a printout you can download of a life-size (kid-size) skeleton. It’s intended to be cut out and colored, but I think it might also be cool to cut out construction paper organs to slap on top.

 

Anatomy Art Projects

Here’s a sculptural anatomy project where kid start with pipe cleaners as bones, add newspaper around them as the muscles, and top it all off with masking tape to represent skin.

 

anatomy art projects

This an art project I found on Pinterest that somebody’s daughter made from household products. I think this would be fun, or kids can try to mold the organs from Playdough. They’re sort of amorphous, anyway….

 

anatomy art projects for kids

Here’s another idea- It would most likely need to be modified, since this artwork is crazy-cool-intricate. But I love quilling (paper rolling art), and think there might be something to pull out of this for a kids’ project. Of course, they could use larger paper spirals made from construction paper.

Anatomical Cross-Sections Made with Quilled Paper by Lisa Nilsson.

 

anatomy projects for kids

I’m loving these t-shirts for kids to color in and wear! You could draw your own organs onto the shirts, or order pre-printed shirts through Sciencewear.net. They’re only $5 each.

My idea #1: Kids could do quick sketches of each other in certain yoga poses, so they get a feel for how the body is moving. Plus? Life drawing practice! Okay, so I didn’t come up with many ideas on my own, but I did add onto the ones I found….

The Anatomy Coloring Book is used extensively for medical and massage students to learn anatomy, so obviously there’s something to this art + learning thing.

anatomy coloring book

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12 thoughts on “Anatomy Art Projects”

  1. We did something like this a few years ago for a homeschool project. I traced both my son and daughter on a large piece of paper. We then (over several weeks) went over each part, learned about it, colored it and then learned how it interacted with everything else.

    It was really fun and they learned a lot.

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  2. Fantastic idea for a fun/learning project and great round-up! Definitely want to print out the full size skeleton for us to color and I think I would like to make my own anatomy t-shirt!

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    • I am such a fan of art/science and art/math projects. As a kid, I was so uninterested in science, and I’m pretty sure it was because of the boring approach by the teachers. Off to check out your post!

      Reply
  3. Thanks for repinning my anatomy shirt (or guts shirt as we call them). This project is also available on an apron for $6. At that price, it really isn’t worth it to trace the organs onto a T-shirt or apron, unless perhaps, you are just doing ONE project. I have other wearable projects too so i hope you visit the site. You might want to check out Facebook.com/ScienceWear and “like” the page. There are lots more images of the finished projects there, along with some other teaching resources.

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    • Hi Daniella- I clicked through and tried to find the original link as well, but had trouble getting any of the pages to load. The link used to work fine, but I guess they haven’t updated their site- not sure. You might be able to contact them if you look around on their site….

      Reply

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