Fetal Pig Dissection Lab Activity for Upper Elementary Students
Suburban ScienceDescription
Are your upper elementary or middle school students curious about the human body? Ready to try a dissection but don't know where to start? This highly visual and engaging fetal pig dissection gives your class a glimpse into the basic internal organs and body systems.
After successfully teaching dissections in Biology and Anatomy courses for 15+ years, I was asked to introduce dissections to younger learners. This lab is perfect for elementary gifted and talented classes, after school science clubs, and traditional science classrooms. It's a great demonstration or hands-on activity to introduce students to the digestive, respiratory, circulatory, immune, and urinary systems. With beautiful visuals, fun human body facts, and bold vocabulary words your students will gain a greater understanding of the human body through dissection.
Dig on into dissections! Detailed teacher instructions and visuals are all included to make this easy and painless for you. Answer keys are also provided for the student pages.
This resource includes:
- Teacher instructions for set-up and clean-up, materials list
- Detailed dissection instructions written on an appropriate reading level for 5th/6th grade students.
- Student worksheet including space for observations, notes, and fill-in diagrams
*Note: Both color and black & white versions are provided. Color pages are perfect for laminating and re-using. Black & white versions are easy to print and copy.
The organs observed during this lab include: umbilical cord, snout, teats, skin, muscle, liver, stomach, gallbladder, small and large intestines, lungs, diaphragm, kidneys, bladder, trachea, heart, brain, spleen
Teaching high school? You will likely prefer my original Fetal Pig Dissection guide, which provides a higher level of detail on each body system.
*Please click on the PREVIEW link above to see actual pages. This will help you to determine if this dissection is an appropriate level for your class.*
Materials required: one or more fetal pigs, scalpel, dissection scissors, probe, tray, string
Are you looking for other dissections as well?