It is the beginning of the new school year and our little ones have started to settle into their new schools. One of themes they are going to be learning about is My Body.
Before a child can learn any new concept, they should know and be aware what their body can do. You will hear the teachers and therapists speak about body awareness. Body awareness is the awareness of how your body can move in a space, what movements the body can make and where each body part is. Think of a child that needs to accomplish the new skill of catching a ball. If that child does not know how he can move his arms around and that he has arms to do this with, how is he going to catch the ball? That is in short, the main reason why “learning about your body” is such an important topic for teachers to discuss before they start teaching any other new skill.
Below is a creative way to help make learning fun. Playdough has always been a favourite among pre-schoolers and has many benefits for children. Some of them being:
Builds Fine Motor Skills
Helps build creativity and imagination
Calms children
Hand Eye Coordination
The children get feedback from their hands as they work with the playdough by squishing and squashing it, they can visually see the product they are making and if the teacher adds some food essence to the home-made playdough the children can even smell the product they are making. This makes for a multi-sensory activity and ensures that learning is taking place efficiently.
Give each child a hand full of play dough in assorted colours.
Explain to them the goal for today’s activity is to learn more about our bodies. Ask them to identify the basic body parts on themselves.
Now ask them to identify the basic body parts on a friend.
Instruct the child to provide all the necessary body parts to their picture, by making the body parts from play dough. We provided a play dough mat with the outline of a face and the outline of a body to guide the child on what to make.
Once the child completed the picture, guide them through the picture to help them check if they remembered to include all the body parts needed.
Hope your child enjoys this activity! Remember, nothing should be perfect. Child learns best when they are having fun!
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