Comparing Bones of birds and mammals lesson

Hi Future Ticia 2024 here, I’m updating this post about comparing bones of mammals and birds, and thought I’d add a bit of an introduction beyond what I originally did. This was a really fun science lesson, and I thought I would reassure everyone reading this. We did a lot of carefully washing our hands, that I didn’t mention originally, and these are all bones which have been cooked, which does change the structure of them, but this is elementary science, not science for medical students. Now back to past Ticia 2011.

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Our science book, Flying Creatures, went into flying and migration this past week or so, and of course, we had to look at the bones of a bird and compare it to a cow bone, because all young kids are comparing bones of dead animals…..

So, when I went grocery shopping I bought a t-bone steak and a whole chicken (though I suppose I could have just bought a chicken drumstick, which achieves the same purpose).

Then we had a couple of very delicious meals, and I was a happy Ticia getting to eat steak, and confusing the heck out of Jeff when I told him not to throw away the bones.  But, he’s getting used to requests like this, and he just requested I get the experiment done soon.

Supplies for comparing animal bones

• chicken bone (from your delicious meal when you make homemade chicken broth)
• cow bone from a T-bone steak (I don’t think bone bought for bone broth would work as well because they dont’ tend to be a cross-section)
• Stand magnifying glass– this is intended for seniors but all the ones I find for students have such a small magnifying area, and I’m pretty sure this looks to be fairly sturdy also, so I’m going to link to this

Our comparing bones lesson

The kids happily examined the bones and looked at them.  They declared the chicken bone to be smoother, and the cow bone to be more rough.

I directed them to think about which felt heavier, and they noticed the cow bone did.

Ah ha!  They played right into my hands, so I got to remind them how our book said birds’ bones are hollow.  Okay, it says there is a web of interconnecting to keep them lighter, but which is easier to explain.

Then I got out my carefully concealed chicken leg bone I’d cut in half.  I apologize for it being blurry, but do you have any idea how hard it is to get a close-up picture of a bone when the kids want to look at it as well?

So, the inside of the chicken bone is mostly hollow, there’s a rather dried-up bit in the middle, which I guess is the marrow.

The kids thought this was fascinating and had a lot of fun exploring and playing with the bones.

I did have to caution them they couldn’t feed them to Mac.  Which was rather disappointing to them.

They were also very disappointed when I said I would not cut the cow bone in half for them to see inside it.  I didn’t feel like explaining this was an already-cut cow bone.  I did explain that it was too thick for my knife to cut and there was no way I could cut it.

That was suitably impressive.

Science learned when comparing bones

But, to get back to actual science, then we theorized what this meant, and finally, after much talking and leading they realized the hollow bones helped the birds fly.

Hi! Future Ticia 2024 is back, I’m going to add in some other lessons we learned that related to this one over the years, because we studied a lot of really cool stuff after 1st grade, obviously.

More cool stuff you might like.

• Food web lesson
• Layers of the Atmosphere lesson
• What to do when your experiment fails
• How to make a nature scavenger hunt
• Because of Winn-Dixie book club