Series

Once Upon a Time... Life

25 episodes

The human-body season of the classic animated series, the one where Maestro narrates and the cells have faces. Twenty-five full episodes of roughly 24 minutes each, one system at a time: blood and bone marrow, the skeleton, digestion, the heart, kidneys, liver, the lymphatic network, the eye, the ear, hormones, the brain. Others zoom out to how the body repairs itself, and the closing episode follows a whole life from growth to its natural end. Slower and far more detailed than a modern explainer, which is exactly why it holds up for a full body-systems unit.

what this series covers

What Once Upon a Time... Life covers

25 episodes in the library, tagged for 3rd–6th. Heaviest coverage: Science and Health. Between them they line up with 5 distinct standards across 2 frameworks.

Episodes per grade

3rd: 23
4th: 25
5th: 25
6th: 25

Episodes per subject

Science: 25
Health: 5

NGSS (Science) 4

4-LS1-1Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
4-LS1-2Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.
3-LS1-1Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.
5-LS2-1Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.