a free worksheet: anatomy of the hand

Our teenage daughter would prefer art to be the sole academic subject in our homeschool, so last week I thought I’d encourage her to learn science while drawing. I asked her to draw an anatomically correct skeleton of the hand for you.

After researching all the bones included in a hand, she looked up x-ray images of hands to come up with this final sketch for you. I’ll share photos of her drawing process below, and will also include a link for you to download this free worksheet (or coloring page) she created for you!

Here is the original pencil sketch:

The pencil sketch was placed on a lightboard, and a new sketch was created — this time using ink and a calligraphy (manga) pen and nib.

She then scanned the ink sketch into Adobe Illustrator, digitally added boxes to make it easier to label the bones, and fixed one mistake (the missing pisiform!)

How to use our free worksheets of the hand’s bone structure

For younger students:

Write the names in colored pencils (or use crayons to color the boxes). Have your child color in each area the labels point to (following our lines).

For older students:

Simply have the older ones fill in the boxes!

Here are the bones in a human hand:

• phalanges (fingers)
• metacarpals (palm)
• carpals (near the wrist)

The phalanges and metacarpals are numbered, while the carpals are named:

• Trapezium
• Trapezoid
• Capitate
• Hamate
• Scaphoid
• Lunate
• Triquetrum (note that I mislabeled this on my colored example)
• Pisiform

here is a preview of the worksheets you’ll download

One worksheet has blank boxes for labeling. See above for the list of bones to put in the boxes.

The other worksheet (below) has the labels filled in already. Print this one out to help with labeling the one above, or use it with younger children (as suggested above).

how to Download the hand anatomy printables

To access the worksheets, fill out your name (a username is fine) and email (which I, and only I will use, and only to occasionally tell you when I’ve created more things for you), and click Download (if you’ve filled out a form on this site before, for other printables or for our newsletter, don’t worry, you won’t be signed up multiple times – the system deletes duplicates.)

WANT A PRINTABLE WORKSHEET OF THE HUMAN SKULL?

We created another printable for you – this time, a free printable worksheet of the anatomy of the human skull.

Our homeschool’s artist

I didn’t get a photo of her this time, so here is a photo of our artist a couple of years ago. If you’re interested, here is how we Naturally Teach Art to Our Children (we basically let them be free).