What's Inside Our Bodies?

Last week we began to think about how we take care of ourselves and our bodies, and so we started off with the question: what is inside our bodies?

I made this felt set that included some of the basic parts of our bodies for the kids to explore and interact with.

A couple kids also "tried on" the pieces so we could get an idea of where the pieces fit inside of us.

Here are some of the other ways we explored bodies:

Can you build a body out of playdough?

This student made a brain. :) 

Body Art with Q-tip bones and Yarn muscles

"Bones and Muscles" Name Building

Wash Your Hands!

We also talked about germs, and ways to protect our body from germs- like washing your hands.

Brush Your Teeth

We've been talking about things that we do with our families, and this week's focus has been learning to take care of our bodies. Here are some of the ways we've been exploring our teeth.

Toothbrush Painting

This art activity is always a hit. We brushed white paint onto yellow paper to make happy smiles.

Although I drew the outline for their first mouth to paint, one student wanted to create his own for a second go around. He kept count of how many teeth he had brushed and cleaned as he painted, which was a fun process to observe. 

Brushing and Flossing Dramatic Play

I painted plastic egg cartons and the bottoms of clear soda bottles to create "teeth" for us to work with this year. The kids could make cavities using play dough or dry erase markers, and then floss and brush the teeth.

Counting and Adding with "The Mouth Game"

I use this activity as both a free play game and a "teacher time" game- meaning I directed the play with small groups or individuals. I played this with individual students, and varied the objectives depending on their level and understanding. The simplest way to play is to roll the dice and add that number of teeth to the mouth. It's a great way to build number sense, and practice counting and creating sets with one-to-one correspondence

I added additional challenges for my pre-K students, such as determining the partners of 10 (each mouth has 10 spaces) or adding their previous number with their new number to determine the new total.

If you play this game like a race, where you take turns and see who can fill up their mouth first, then it lends itself to some great math talk about who has the most, who has the least, how many spaces are left, etc.

Felt Board Singing and Play

I also have some felt board pieces of a mouth and teeth that I use for songs and other activities. I often use this mouth with small black pieces to talk about cavities, and involve the kids in brushing them away as we talk about how to keep our teeth strong and healthy. 

Squeaky Clean Sensory Bin

This sensory bin has been pretty popular.

I introduced this hand washing and bathing sensory bin as part of our healthy body unit. All it took was some sponges, foam cut-outs, soap, and water. Our hands have never been cleaner. 

Dressed for Winter

There has been a wintry chill in the air all week, and today the weather forecast predicted snow. Our focus this month has been taking care of our bodies, so in light of the change in the weather I planned a last-minute, mini-lesson on dressing for winter.

First, we had a quick discussion about how it had been getting colder outside and the weather report about snow. I brought up taking care of our body by keeping it warm when it gets cold, and asked the students for ideas about how to do that.

Then we read the Froggy book, Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London.

In this book, Froggy wakes up one winter day and sees snow outside. Even though his mom encourages him to keep hibernating (this aspect of the story could be used again in the winter for talking about hibernating animals), he is determined to go anyway. Froggy goes about getting dressed for winter in silly ways, and keeps forgetting important items of clothing. This process makes for really fun read-aloud that also reinforces the idea of dressing appropriately for the weather.

My stuffed frog is not actually Froggy (it came with this Kohl's Cares book I got a few years ago), but it sure looks close enough. So after we read the book, we dressed Froggy. I was in a little bit of a rush to find clothes for him this morning and after ransacking my son's old baby clothes, this was about the best I could come up with. I forgot to grab mittens or a scarf, but the kids didn't seem to mind.

As soon as I was done, a student asked "Can we play with Froggy?" So naturally, he ended up in the dramatic play room where the kids could keep dressing him up for winter. I think this play activity will easily evolve into other forms of dressing for winter play as the season goes on.

The best part of today was that every kid wanted to wear their coat when we went outside to play, and we were not disappointed by the weather. As we were playing outside, little snowflakes started to fall, and the kids were so excited. The snow didn't stick or even last long, but it was just enough to reinforce the idea that a new season is on its way.