Our Bodies..."have so many parts and things!"

The Boo Boo Book by Joy Masoff and Jack Dickason is a favorite in our classroom. It's the kind of book that kids love. There are lots of flaps to lift up (under the cast there is an x-ray of a broken bone!) and things to feel (a scratchy scab!) It has been in one of our book baskets for quite awhile and always gets a lot of love but recently it seemed to be extra popular. Due to its popularity, I decided I should probably read it at circle time and do an activity around it. This one book (that my mom bought at a yard sale, thanks mom!) blossomed into a few weeks of studying our bodies. We learned so much and had a great time doing it! We shared a few boo boo stories too...

                             

One of our circle time facts was: "The human body has 206 bones." We talked about this for awhile and tried to feel some of our bones. We especially liked feeling our friends spines. Then, we made skeletons out of cotton swabs after reading a halloween story about a skeleton and a mummy. We liked how our white crayons showed up on the black paper. In the story, the friendly skeleton's name is Sammy. Every skeleton we looked at after reading the book was most certainly named Sammy! 

Using tape was great for our fine motor muscles and also a lot of fun. Putting this skeleton together took team work! 

At another circle time we learned the names of a few bones. We focused on the femur, our largest bone and the stapes, our smallest bone. After circle time, friends visited the carpet to try putting "Sammy's" bones together. "He has a femur!"

X is for X-ray. After learning about x-rays we painted our palms and made x-rays of our own.

A great spatial awareness activity! We laid down on large packing paper and traced our bodies. We added clothes just like we were wearing that day. We really liked standing next to our traced bodies once they were hung up on the wall. "I'm big!"

Most definitely our favorite body activity of the unit! We learned about the insides of our body (esophagus, heart, lungs and stomach) and then made paper bag suits so we could see how they work.  The interactive design of this activity proved to be such a great learning tool. We dropped uncooked pasta down the esophagus and could see it landing in the stomach! When we blew into the straws the lungs expanded! Amazing! When I reviewed these parts later in the week, we remembered them all! Interactive learning sticks! 

"David has a body like me." 

Clouds

This week we had a perfect emergent curriculum moment. On Monday during the circle time weather report one of the kids reported that it wasn’t cloudy when in fact, the entire sky was covered in clouds. We went out on the porch to get a closer look. We discovered that the sky was covered in clouds, like a blanket. That night I phased out my lesson plans on superheroes and researched clouds.

 We started with a cloud science experiment. There was so much excitement as their clouds grew heavy with rain! 

 We had an awesome time learning about the clouds for the rest of the week. We did so many fun things. On Tuesday we read the book The Little Cloud by Eric Carle. It is a new favorite! In the story we followed Little Cloud as he changed into different shapes. After we read the book (twice) we painted our own little clouds, who had turned into some great shapes like: donuts, numbers, letters, dogs, and even a tornado.

We used cotton balls to make a cloud book of our own after we learned about the three basic types of clouds (Cumulus, Cirrus, and Stratus.) Everyone read his or her cloud book before naptime. It’s great hearing them use the cloud vocabulary words as they read and talk.

At the end of the week we painted clouds again, using cotton balls one day and puffy cloud paint the next (shaving cream mixed with glue.) We made dream clouds that we will hang from our ceiling. We also read Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld. We wore Cloudette necklaces all morning as a story treasure.