Anatomy for kids: circulatory system game

Back when we first started studying the circulatory system in our science lessons, Amber over at Fantastic Five shared a circulatory system game.  I told her we were totally going to play that game, and we did.  It was a huge hit! I’ve added it into my Anatomy lessons.

All you need for this game is the printout, something to color with, tape, and scissors.  I would add in dice and not use their suggested spinner, but I’ll get into the modifications we made to the Circulatory System game later.

{This post contains affiliate links.  For more information read my disclosure page}

Circulatory System Game Mechanics

You are a blood cell moving through the system and performing the jobs of a red blood cell.  You start off in the marrow where blood is first produced and have to go through picking up waste, delivering oxygen, and food to the “cells.”  Your goal is to do so before the other blood cells have done so, simple enough right?  Here are the complications:

• You have to pick up and deliver items to each leg and arm, and the head.  These are obviously totally different directions, you have to decide what is the most efficient way to complete these activities.
• You have the option to add more blood cells in, is that a wise use of your resources?  I still haven’t decided on that one.

Our Circulatory System Game modifications

As I read the instructions for the circulatory system game and the suggestions Amber made, I went ahead and made a few more modifications, partially to cut down on the time the circulatory system game takes to play, partially to enforce some other skills I’m working on with the kids.

1. We used a dice we owned, we started off with a 6 sided dice (the kind you have in most games) then moved on to a 10 sided dice.  You have to cover a lot of ground and to make the game move more quickly I tried to get them moving over more spaces.
2. On the topic of movement.  We started off multiplying the number rolled by 5, but ended up moving it to multiplying by 10.  It helped reinforce their multiplication.  All to the good.
3. The original rules has you delivering 2 or 3 of each item to each place.  I’d modify it to only delivering 1.  We started off by only delivering 2, but even that leads to a fairly long game when you have multiple kids.
4. Make sure each child uses 1 color for their pieces, you could make this even easier by printing each child’s pieces onto a different color of copy paper, but that would have meant I read the instructions ahead of time, which I didn’t.

What we learned about the Circulatory System

Part of why I like this circulatory system game is it gets into the hands-on learning we really love, and it reinforces what was in the textbook.  Look at all they saw with this game:

• The different ways the blood travels.  There were so many paths to take.
• The amazing complexity of our circulatory system.  It’s confusing when you first start looking at it.  Each time our blood cells reached the heart we had to sit and look at where the blood vessels went.  God made our bodies amazing complex.
• The many jobs our blood does.  It carries so many different things, and this game simplified it.

And with a big sigh of relief, I am finally done writing about the circulatory system.  It’s amazing how much we really did once I sat down and wrote about it, and most of this was way back in March….  And I still had a few more activities I thought about doing, but finally just said, “That’s enough, we can do that later if need be.”

More Circulatory System Resources

• Uncover the Human Body: An Uncover It Book
• Human Anatomy and Physiology
• Anatomy Pinterest board