anatomy

Anatomical Puzzles for Children

/ sarahlcurtiss

Both Hape and Melissa & Doug have made anatomically correct body puzzles.

Hape sells boy and girl puzzles separately for around $20.00 each.  The children are pre-pubescent and European American.  The video below shows a child completing the puzzle. The toys are distributed by Hape but are actually made by a company called Beleduc out of Holland. Beleduc also has a great pregnant mother puzzle that is a little difficult to find.

Melissa & Doug make a magnetic human body play set that includes children of both genders for about 13.00.  The children are early adolescents and European American.

Adult Human Sexuality Curriculum

/ Veronica

These curricula materials are for educators working with young adults. It is a bit more in depth than the high school curriculum and discusses human sexuality in a broader sense.AdultHumanSexuality

High School Human Sexuality Curriculum

/ Veronica
This is the session of Human Sexuality 101 was offered by The Autism Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This group was designed for three high school/young adult girls and boys with ASD.   The teens in this group were bright and engaging and have had a little formal exposure to sexuality concepts, but still struggle with the more nuanced facets. Many of these activities could be adapted for groups of various sizes and ability levels.

You can find all of our lesson plans for the high school human sexuality classes here.

HighSchoolHumanSexuality

8 Week Middle School Human Sexuality Curriculum

/ sarahlcurtiss / 2 Comments

Over the summer, I did a 8 week sexuality class with middle school students with autism (3 boys and 3 girls).  I’ve posted each lesson from the curriculum, but I thought I’d link all the posts together so you could get to them in one place.  For each session there is a lesson plan, parent letter, and power point slides.  Some lessons also have worksheets.  I’ve also commented about how the lessons went and some ideas for adaptation.  Click on the links below to go to the posts and access the materials.

Human Sexuality 101 topic

*We sent home a workbook with follow up/supplemental material during this lesson.  The workbook is available on the post.

High School Human Sexuality 101 Week 2- Anatomy

/ jpbrown2 / 1 Comment

FemaleReproductiveSystem_Lateral_250w

Anatomy and Reproduction were the topics for week 2. We started off the session with a game called “Parts and Post-it Notes” to talk about body parts with the participants. To play this game we had a giant piece of paper with the outline of a body on it. We gave the participants post-it notes to write down the body parts that they knew and asked them to place them on the outline of the body.

After this activity, the participants were told that for the rest of the class they would be focusing on body parts related to reproduction (another way to refer to sex organs or private parts). The participants were then directed to the next activity where they practiced saying terminology related to reproduction out loud and recording their responses to how saying the words made them feel.

When the participants finished the terminology activity, we spit them into two groups to start the fruit anatomical model of reproductive organs using fruit. The participants were shown a picture of the parts of the body and were giving tooth picks and flash cards to label the fruit parts and their functions. This activity was great for the participants to learn the vocabulary in a little abstract and safe way! For a more concrete example of reproduction, we used the “Miracle of Life” video to explain the process.

We ended this session by having the participants briefly summarize that they learned during the session.

For more information on anatomy view our Human Sexuality 101 Week 2- Anatomy, EXPLAINING ANATOMY, YOUTUBE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: HEALTHCHANNEL, SEXPLANATIONS, AND CSPH, ADULT HUMAN SEXUALITY WEEK 2- ANTATOMY & REPRODUCTION posts

This Week’s Materials

Week 2 Lesson Plan

Week 2 Slides

Parent Letter

Worksheets

Anatomy labels

Adult Human Sexuality Week 2- Antatomy & Reproduction

/ sarahlcurtiss / 4 Comments

reproduction

You’re probably sick of seeing my fruity anatomical models, but I just can’t help myself from teaching them- at least I gave you a different picture.  I love that activity.  One of the participants in the class has trained to be an EMT and is now working on becoming an nurses assistant so he was able to explain the reproductive processes and anatomy.  On the other hand, other folks had a hard time looking at pictures of the developing fetus and seeing progression from cells to a more complex organism.  I think there just wasn’t enough context and exposure to those images.  All the participants in our class had this piece of sex ed before so they knew all the basic parts of anatomy.  We got into a nice discussion about reproductive anatomy and why it’s private and why it’s taboo.

When talking about reproduction, be careful not to limit conception to just intercourse (although this is critical information too).  In our activity we framed sperm entering the vagina as through intercourse or a medical procedure.  You could go into more depth and talk about different fertility options.  Why?  First, intercourse is not the only birth story and specifically it’s less likely to be the birth story for children with gay or lesbian parents.  I think it’s important not to assume that heterosexuality is the norm.  Second, many individuals have difficulty conceiving and need fertility support.   I think it’s important not to  assume fertility is the norm. 

For the supplemental materials my co-facilitator and I got into an interesting situation.  The book she wanted to use was only available in the children’s section at the public library.  It was a really nice resource, but we were concerned about sending adults to the children’s section.  All the reproduction books with pictures were in the children’s not fiction section.  In the end, we decided to include it, but put a warning where it was located.  I’m not sure this was the best choice, but that’s what we went with at the time.  We also encouraged participants to watch “Life’s Greatest Miracle”.  This is a great teaching tool, and they could stream it for free!

I’ve attached the lesson plan and supplemental materials below.

Materials

Privacy Activity

/ Veronica

Teaching and learning about privacy can be difficult and confusing. This activity uses a continuum of privacy  (using private, semi-private, and public) to help differentiate privacy levels. There are two topics: body parts and places. You can use this activity to explain different privacy levels and explain contextual differences (i.e. a stomach can be a public body part at the beach, but a private body part at school) . Download the privacy activity places and body parts here!

privacy pocketsprivacy continuum

Human Sexuality 101 Week 2- Anatomy

/ sarahlcurtiss / 2 Comments

Today’s Agenda

Parts and Post-it Notes:  We started the group out by having them label body parts they already knew.  By starting out with safe, comfortable body parts students were more prepared for unknown body parts or parts that may have caused feelings of anxiety.

Terminology: We introduced sexual terminology in written from and asked the students to say the words out loud.  Between each word we’d pause and they had a worksheet with the question “I feel…” Reading a word and saying it are easier then looking at a body part so we were building their comfort level.  Also, feelings of embarrassment can be difficult for students to manage.  This is structuring a way for them to think about and express their feelings.

We had a lot of fun learning about anatomy although the topic was also met with groans, giggles, and our group’s favorite lamentation, “I want to throw up.”  More over there was general confusion about what the parts of the body involved with reproduction even are.  Essentially, they knew butt, penis, vagina, testicles and breasts but that was it.

Fruity Anatomical Model:  The students will made anatomical models of the reproductive organs using fruit.  As they made the model, we talked about the function of each part.  Again the fruit makes the concept a little more abstract and safe.  This is a fun way to engage students in what is essentially a vocabulary task.

We saw some clear developmental differences today. The older kids in the group were able to stick with the more abstract activities and accomplish the tasks, but the younger kids in the group were a little overwhelmed. In the future, I may modify the task for younger students to focus on fewer parts of the body and instead of making the anatomical models,  we could play a game with body flash cards.

Privacy: We introduced the concept that privacy is about personal things you want to keep to yourself and explained that the parts of the body we were just talking about were private body parts.  We will also introduced that certain places are private, that you share with different people private information or ideas, that ideas can be private.  The main distinction is that there is a difference between private and public, but we presented three levels to indicate that there is a continuum of privacy.

We were a little rushed when we got to the privacy section.  It was hard for them to transition from private body parts to other concepts of privacy.  Although they seemed capable of these ideas, they were a little to revved up from the anatomical models and we needed more time.

For more information on anatomy view our  EXPLAINING ANATOMY, YOUTUBE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: HEALTHCHANNEL, SEXPLANATIONS, AND CSPH, ADULT HUMAN SEXUALITY WEEK 2- ANTATOMY & REPRODUCTION posts

Materials for Today’s Lesson

Sexual Health- Pelvic Exams

/ sarahlcurtiss

Many women with development disabilities are under anesthesia during pelvic exams or don’t get them at all (or as recommended).  However, educating about pelvic exams may be an important part of teaching sexual health.  I’ve included the link to a video that may help.

This is a brief video that goes through the basic procedure of a woman having a pelvic exam.  This could also be a good video for teaching about female anatomy.  It has a lot of technical terminology but it also moves nice and slow.

Anatomical Models and Drawings

/ sarahlcurtiss / 1 Comment

These models are from http://jimjacksonanatomymodels.com/ It can be a little difficult to find the kind of anatomical model that you want for a sexual education class.  I’ve used these models and I think they are very instructive.  They are realistic so it may not be appropriate for all audiences but a lot of folks need things this concrete.  If you’re teaching condom use, make sure to use vinyl condoms (latex condoms can hurt the models).  The cost of the models ranges from $180 – $660 depending on what you’re getting.  It’s an investment, but a great teaching tool. WebMD has nice anatomical line drawings that are okay to print for free. http://www.medscape.com/features/ald/repro Once you get into color photos, they usually ask you to pay.  You can probably find some on the internet that don’t have water marks (like on webmd or mayo clinic ) but they are usually copyrighted. This site will give you a lot of options available for purchase http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/reproductive-system.html  This site has more medically technical options (they also have online interactive models, but those are pretty technical too).  http://catalog.nucleusinc.com/generateexhibit.php?ID=9591

Explaining Anatomy

/ sarahlcurtiss / 2 Comments

I had a blast in Carbondale (thank you all)!  People really responded to the time we spent thinking about how to explain concepts like arousal and orgasm.  In the anatomy lesson of the curriculum we’ve been did this summer, I have similar explanations for explaining the reproductive parts of the body.  I’m going to include the entire list here, but if the entire list is too overwhelming for your students choose 3-5 physiological parts to focus on per gender.  I would recommend reading over the full WEB MD definitions of these terms (click here for the worksheet Body Part Functions)- you may come up with better explanations!

Some general ideas I try to convey…

  • Some people’s reproductive organs are mostly inside the body and some people’s are mostly outside the body.
  • Reproductive organs are a system of tubes, canals, and storage centers that connect to one another.
  • Reproductive organs produce genetic information and try to bring it together. 

Vulva: A part of a person’s body that is used for reproduction, urination, and pleasure. The vulva is outside the body. Every vulva looks a little bit different, but they all have folds of skin, openings into the body, and a clitoris. During puberty, the folds of skin become covered in hair.

Labia majora: Skin that protects the vulva

Labia minora: Skin that protects the opening to the vagina

Clitoris:  Skin and nerves that cause pleasure

Vagina (birth canal): The vagina is used for reproduction and pleasure. During reproduction, the job of the vagina is to connect the uterus to the outside world. When a baby is born, the vagina squeezes in a special way to help the baby out of the uterus. When being used for pleasure, the vagina can be touched to make the body feel good.

Uterus:  Where a baby grows

Ovaries: Holds the eggs (which hold genetic information)

Fallopian Tubes:  Connects the ovaries and the uterus


Penis: A part of a person’s body that is used for reproduction, urination, and pleasure. The penis is outside the body. Every penis is a little bit different but they all are shaped like tubes with a small hole at the end.

Scrotum: A tissue sack that holds the testes. During puberty it gets covered with hair.

Testicles (testes): Produces sperm (genetic information)

Epidermis: Where sperm mature

Vas deferens: Brings sperm to the urethra

Ejaculatory ducts: a connector.

Urethra: carries urine and semen out of the body

Seminal Vesicles & Prostate Gland: Produce sperm energy

Bulbourethral gland (Cowper’s glands): Produces lubricant (makes things slippery)

Free Curriculum- Parent Version, Teacher Version, Spanish Version

/ sarahlcurtiss

ImageI’m really excited about this free curriculum, “Sexuality Across the Lifespan” by: DiAnn L. Baxley and Anna L. Zendell.  It has versions for educators, teachers, and Spanish speakers.  You can view the curriculum by clicking on the links below.

What makes this special?  They do a nice job at adjusting lessons for different age groups, giving ideas for supplemental activities, and giving ideas for incorporating the topics into routines.  The parent version really focuses on how to reinforce healthy sexual development through interactions and daily routines.

This curriculum in not comprehensive but does have sections on social skills, dating, sexual abuse, puberty, and anatomy.  I hope you find this useful!