We were introduced to the Dr. Bonyfide 4 book series by you guessed it, Timberdoodle Co. They really have done such an amazing job at curating a wonderful collection of educational items for every grade level. Filled with puny dad jokes and pneumonic devices it will keep your kids laughing while everyone learns (including mom and dad) something. We had previously used one of these books when it came with my daughter's 4th grade curriculum, so we were very excited for a chance to go through the whole set. I used these books with my 5th grade daughter and 8th grade son. The Dr. Bonyfide books is one of many amazing learning curricula from Know Yourself Academy.
Book 1: Bones of the Hand. Arm. and Sholder
This book covers from the tips of your fingers to your shoulder. It breaks down each section in smaller chunks to really help the kids learn it. The first section starts with the hand, then moves to the lower arm, and finally the upper arm and shoulder. This book is filled with information about not only the particular bones you are studying but also how children's and adults' bodies differ as our bones change. There are fill in the blanks, matching and crossword puzzles all to reinforce what they've learned. The end of the book has some bonus content about what goes on inside our bones. This section was more appropriate for my older son but, wasn't over the head of my daughter. Each book has a certificate at the end you can present your child for completing the book. One of my kids' favorite parts of the book was the "x-ray" decoder glasses that comes with the book to look at the bones and see the puny bone jokes. To me the pneumonic devices used to teach the bones in sets was key to getting my ADHD/ASD son to learn all of the names of the bones and where they go.
Book 2: Bones of the Foot, Leg, and Pelvis
This book was set up very similar to the first book. You start at the foot and move up to the hip. We went through the first half of the first section of this book a little faster because we learned that the foot and hand share some names and have some very similar names, so it was much quicker to learn. While there is one less bone in the back half of the foot, the way the back half/wrist of the hand was broken up, it was easier to memorize than the back half/ankle of the foot. Having the legs and arms be similar with two lower leg bones and one upper helped speed us back along. The pelvic girdle slowed us down a bit more but using what we've learned in the book we came up with our own way of memorizing where the bones were located. It was tricky as two bones start with the same letter and sound very similar. This book also contained the "x-ray" glasses, but I'm not sure if it was just our book but it didn't work as well to see the bones or read the jokes. There was also some bonus content about bones in general which again was fine for my kids age group would maybe be a bit dull for a younger child
Book 3: Bones of the Rib Cage and Spine
This book covers all the bones of the spine and rib cage. While this book has more total bones. It was the easiest to learn so far. Mostly just having to remember a letter and a number. This book could still be tricky learning all the parts of the spine and the order they go in plus, with each section having a different number of bones, which section has which amount. This book was a little easier for my kids because there were just a few names to learn and mostly numbers. New in this book were characters for each bone section. The characters were funny and helped to really enforce the names of the different parts of the spine. Each character has their own comic strip the kids found very engaging. My kids were a bit sad that this one didn't have the x-ray glasses but loved the addition of the comics with the characters. This books bonus section is a little smaller but, was still packed with great information.
Book 4: Bones of the Head, Neck and Face
This book covers all the bones in the head, neck, and face. This by far was the hardest set of bones to learn. With only 29 to learn it is the fewest number of bones to learn, the names are a bit tricky and a lot of the tricks we used to remember where a specific bone was didn't work for this book. This book also used the characters and the comic section that both my kids really enjoyed. New in this book was a notes section. This book to me, is designed for an older child compared to the previous books in the series. There is so much information that even I as an adult didn't know or had never learned. With most of the extra bone information already covered in the back of the previous books there was not as much bonus material in the back of this one.
Overview
We absolutely loved these Dr. Bonyfide books, and I was surprised how quickly my kids have been able to learn all of the bones in their bodies. I remember memorizing the bones when I was in middle school, and I can say without a doubt these books were a far superior way to learning the bones. I was surprised how much I learned and how the little tips and tricks worked so well. This was not just a way to memorize for a test, but a way to truly learn these for life. My kids loved to tell all their friends and family all the things they learned and even taught their older relatives a thing or two. It was so nice that the hard to pronounce words had pronunciation guides so these books can be done with or without you the parent. I recommend learning together because they really were so fun to learn. This really was the perfect addition to our human anatomy science curriculum this year. While the colorful images and fun nature of the books are designed to be more kid friendly this would be good for even high school students.
The only thing I wished it had was a quiz/test section. I ended up copying some of the fill in the blank or the draw a line pages and used those after completion to "test" to see what had been retained and what still needed work.
We received the Dr. Bonyfide 4 book set from Timberdoodle Co in exchange for my fair and honest review. I am under no obligation to write a positive review and would never promote or recommend something my family didn't personally find useful or valuable to our educational journey.
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