Skeleton themed activities get my students digging deeper into learning! Of course you can link this unit to Halloween, but it really can be done anytime during the school year. This unit is one of my top 5 favorite thematic units that I use in my classroom. I focus on the Core Standards and The Science of Reading for what needs to be taught to my students, but why not have a little fun doing it while teaching children about the world around them?

Skeletons are fascinating, and everyone has one! We can take this topic and combine the fun with the intellectual!

When we begin this unit, I ask my students how they are able to move around, what stops them from flopping all over the place, or sliding around like a slug? We usually have an awesome discussion on skeletons and what they already know. I tell my little learners that this week we will be discussing skeletons.

We then take some time to explore our skeletons by feeling our head, ribs, spine, and my personal favorite, phalanges. We learn the names of these bones as well. When they get really good, we change head, shoulders, knees and toes to: skull, clavicle, patella and phalanges. Phonemic awareness can easily be incorporated into this activity by finding the number of syllables and beginning sounds in the names of the bones. I end the session with an exploration of the hand and arm and we create these awesome x-ray art projects to hang in the windows.

I hit two literacy goals throughout this unit such as RL.K.9 and RI.K.9. We read a wide variety of fiction and non- fiction books. Students are asked to compare and contrast the fictional stories with each other and compare non-fiction books. We also compare and contrast the fiction with non-fiction books. I love to hear how thoughtful their answers are, as we work through this topic together. They mention that both books have skeletons in them, of course, but also creative things such as the number of skeletons in each book or one book has animal skeletons in them and the other doesn’t. They're so excited to learn, everyone is participating.

My centers are full of activities for the students to complete independently, both literacy and math. I love having a story for each unit that students can read, color and practice their fluency. When I first introduce the center, I read the story aloud to them on the elmo. Then we read it aloud as a whole class. Both times I model the correct way to point to the words as we read. Students then read it to themselves and color it afterwards. Usually I have had the kids keep the books in the classroom to be read repeatedly throughout the year, but this year I decided to send them home so students have a variety of texts to read at home.