Body Integrity And Anatomy For Toddlers {PlayLearning}

Ameli is four years old right now, so while I think it’s valuable and important to introduce a discussion on our bodies, this won’t be a very academic week (not that they ever are, but what I mean is that it won’t be deep biology or anything). We’re also having a shorter ‘themed’ week this week, because it’s Aviya’s second birthday, if you’ll believe that.  I want to incorporate two things in the ‘My Body’ theme this week: how the body works, yes, but also bodily autonomy – a brief discussion on no being no, and on respecting your body and expecting the same respect from others. I’m not entirely sure how yet, but I will let the conversation flow, I guess. Below are some of the ideas we’ll try out this week, but below that is my Pinterest board with plenty more ideas for you to peruse.

Activities:

• Gingerbread Man Cakes
• Draw yourself
• Recipe For A Human
• See Your Heartbeat
• Tests around Heartbeat
• See How Your Ear Drums Work
• Label parts of the body
• iChild’s parts of the body – nice for early readers
• Glitter to show the spread of germs
• Thumb print crafts
• Positive Parenting Connection has six wonderful tips on helping children learn about their bodies. 

Book Recommendations:

• The Interactive Human Body
• Myself – Themes From Early Years
• The Big Body Book – a perfect book for toddlers
• Amazing Body Scene– there are 7 pull out scenes and over 50 stickers in this one. My four year old loved it.
• The Magic School Bus Inside The Human Body

Watch:

• Once Upon A Time… Life (you can find it here on Youtube too) This is heavily slanted to evolution in the beginning, so if you’re a Creationist you may want to skip the first minute or two.
• The Magic School Bus (you can find it here on Youtube too)

I think it’s really important to mention here that this isn’t meant to be about ‘stranger danger’ (for us, anyway). Not least because I don’t really agree with the concept of stranger danger. Rather than teaching children to be afraid of strangers, I will be teaching mine to set their comfort limits, listen to the voice inside them, and how to act when something feels wrong. I believe those are lessons that will carry them through teenage years and into womanhood better served than ‘stranger danger’. Here’s our Pinterest board for “My Body”, feel free to follow along! Follow Luschka van Onselen’s board {PlayLearning} My Body on Pinterest.