Gingerbread Anatomy - New and Improved!

While I have made Anatomy gingerbread men before - see HERE, today was a totally upgraded experience.  I found an amazing activity online by Mr. Stephens where students create a clay gingerbread man, and perform surgery on him.  

I used this as a review of anatomical terminology before their midterm.  We all know reviewing can be very dry and difficult to get students interested in, and this hooked even my most reluctant students.


Here's an example of the instructions from his lab - "The patient's spleen was ruptured during the accident and needs to be removed.  Make a sagittal incision in the lateral portion of the left hypochondriac region.  Which organ must you move out of the way in order to locate and remove the spleen?  Suture the incision by drawing a short line with cross marks on it."


With something as simple as toothpicks, a plastic knife, and play-doh, my students were reminded of planes/sections, directional terms, and abdominopelvic regions.

There is a surgery documentation form where students record all their procedures, and at the end they must determine priority order if they were doing triage on the patient in the ER - bringing in those real life career connections.

They had a great time and were reminded of their terminology in a way that paper and pencil just can't compete with.