X-rays are pictures that doctors take to see what your bones look like. Making a window x-ray craft is a fun way for school age children to learn about what x-rays are while making a unique craft with your own hand! Only a few supplies are needed to make your x-ray. After your x-ray craft is made it can be placed in the window to see the x-ray light up with some sunlight on a sunny day!
Supplies:
Any color construction paper
Black crayon
Vegetable Oil
Bowl
Q-tip
Tape
Activity Steps:
Step 1: First you will need to gather all the supplies that you will need to make your x-ray. You can decide what color paper you would like to use!Then you are going to place all of your supplies on a hard surface such as a table or counter for your work space.
Step 2: Now you are going to take one sheet of whichever color construction paper you decided on and set it down on your work space. I choose to use orange construction paper. Then you are going to place your hand and wrist on top of the orange construction paper. You will want to make sure your fingers are spread apart before tracing. After your hand is on the paper you are going to use the black crayon and trace around your hand and wrist area. This part might tickle your fingers but try to keep your fingers still!
*Helpful tip:You can ask for adult help to trace your hand or you can trace your hand by yourself. If you want to trace your own hand make sure you trace you use the hand you don’t use for writing/drawing.
Step 3: Next you are going to take a look at your hand and bend each finger to see where your finger bends. Did you notice your thumb only bends in one place instead of two like your other fingers? This will help you mark the right spot on your x-ray! Using your black crayon you are going to draw a straight line across on each finger where your finger bends. The part where your finger bends is also called a joint. The thumb will only have one black line. Your other fingers will have two black lines.
Step 4: Then you are going to take your black crayon and draw bones on your fingers on your hand. Even though we can’t see our bones when we look at our hands they look all different shapes and sizes on x-rays! What do you think your bones look like?The bones you draw should look oval shaped. There will be two bones drawn in your thumb and three bones drawn in your other fingers. Your finger bones are also called phalanges.
*Helpful tip: Each bone will be drawn between the straight lines/joints that you drew in the previous step.
Step 5: Next you are going to use your black crayon to draw your hand bones. There will be five bones total that are drawn in an oval shape underneath the finger bones to the start of your wrist bone. You have one hand bone that connects to each of your finger bones!
Step 6: Now you are going to take your black crayon and draw eight bones in the shape of small circles underneath the hand oval shaped bones. You will have four circles in one line and four circles in the line underneath. These bones are located in your wrist! Can you feel all eight bones in your wrist?
Step 7: After all of your bones are drawn, you are going to take your black crayon and begin to color in all the space around the bones you drew. This will help your bones light up on your x-ray!
*Helpful tip: The bones will still be the color of your paper.
Step 8: Next Pour a small amount about the size of a quarter of vegetable oil into a bowl. You only need enough to paint each bone. You can always add more if you need more. Your bowl does not need to be very large. It just needs to be large enough to pour a little vegetable oil in!
Step 9: Place one q-tip into the bowl with the vegetable oil in. Take your q-tip with the vegetable oil on and paint it on each bone you drew. You will want each bone to be completely covered in vegetable oil. Your bones will now look darker in color!
*Helpful tip: Your q-tip should not have a lot of oil on it.
Step 10: Once your x-ray is dried you are now ready to hang your x-ray of your hand in a window using some tape and let the sunlight shine through your x-ray!
~Made by Brittani N.