22 Body Parts Activities for Preschoolers - Empowered Parents
Categories Preschool Themes
Starting a ‘My Body Theme’ with your kids at home or school? Here are some fun body parts activities for preschoolers.
They are all play-based ideas incorporating art, music and movement, stories and discussions, science and maths, cooking, and dramatic play.
Kids need to develop an awareness of and appreciation for their bodies for several different reasons.
When they become more aware of their body parts and their remarkable functions, they learn to feel confident about all the different things their amazing bodies can accomplish.
In addition, understanding how their bodies move and where they are positioned in space increases body awareness.
Knowing how they relate to people and objects helps when children move their bodies, determine how close to stand near others, and when moving from one spot to another.
A great deal of this learning happens naturally during the course of a day.
Parents and teachers can also ensure that human body preschool activities are integrated into all areas of play, such as art, music, movement, and story time.
Kids love to produce various types of “masterpieces,” and body parts art is a great opportunity to increase awareness of their bodies.
Children lie on lengths of paper to be traced around by adults.
Then kids can decorate their tracings with their names, body details, and labels of body parts, depending on their age and level of learning.
Working outside, when possible, paint the bottoms of feet and palms of hands with washable paints.
Children then press their feet or hands onto large sheets of paper, leaving colourful prints. Make sure you have plenty of soapy water available for cleanups.
3. Bone Painting with Cotton Swabs
Show kids several examples of x-rays. Give them cutouts of the human form on dark construction paper (or traced for them to cut out).
They can then dip cotton swabs (such as Q-tips or cotton buds) into white tempera and paint “bones” on their cutouts.
4. Fingerprinting Fun
Share one of the Ed Emberley fingerprinting fun books, showing how cute pictures can be made with fingerprints.
Provide washable coloured ink pads (like these) and plain paper, urging kids to design their own fingerprint pictures by adding details with pencils or markers.
5. Modeling with Playdough
Get kids to make fun 3-D figures of bodies. Show them how to take pieces of dough and roll them to make limbs, or into a round ball for a head.
They can also form large, flatter models of faces with the appropriate features affixed.
Here’s a recipe for easy playdough without cream of tartar.
Many movement activities, games, and songs about body parts reinforce the concepts in a fun way, often giving preschoolers some exercise at the same time.
6. Playing and Singing Old Favorites
These songs teach the body parts as well as movements the body makes.
Scrub a Dub Dub Song
Using clips of different music types, challenge kids to adjust their dancing to fit the speed and mood of the various tunes without touching any of the other dancers!
8. Moving Like Animals
Look at pictures of and discuss various types of animals.
How would they move their heads?
How would they walk and prance?
What sounds could come from their mouths?
Encourage children to move and behave like the animals of the forest, farm, or jungle.
Show kids how to walk along a rope or masking tape “balance beam” affixed to the floor.
Add more of a challenge by asking them to walk with a beanbag in various positions: on the head, in the hands, in the crook of an elbow, under the chin, etc.
Share stories about body parts with preschoolers, discussing them as seems fitting. Books can be non-fiction/informational or presented in a fictional manner.
10. Sharing Books and Videos
Tons of books in print and other media can be found at the library and online. Here are just a few popular titles that fit with the human body theme:
My Hands / My Feet / I’m Growing – by Aliki
Your Body – Melvin and Gilda Berger
Belly Button Book – Sandra Boynton
The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body – Joanna Cole
Bonaparte Falls Apart – Margery Cuyler
Here Are My Hands – Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
The Tooth Book – Dr. Seuss
Hear Your Heart – Paul Showers
11. Writing and Illustrating a Class Book
After sharing a variety of books about bodies, urge children to help write a class book based on a popular title.
They dictate while you write on a large chart paper tablet, leaving open spaces for illustrations. After the writing is finished, kids help illustrate the pages.
When completed, read the book together.
Make dress-up clothes, puppets, dolls, and various types of props available to children for encouraging the use of their imaginations.
12. Acting Out Literature
After reading and discussing fictional stories that fit with the body parts theme, invite preschoolers to act out the stories, using puppets, costumes and props.
Here are four types of puppets that are easy to make.
13. Playing Hospital
Provide simple pretend or real tools and supplies that doctors and nurses often use, encouraging dramatic play.
Don’t forget to include papers and pencils for the “office work” that often accompanies this type of setting.
Many science and maths concepts can be presented through play-based learning. To fit with the human body parts theme, think about counting, body symmetry, and how various body parts work.
14. Exploring Body Symmetry
Fold or draw lines vertically in the middle of body shapes from top to bottom.
Talk about how both sides have one of each facial feature or appendage, and how each foot or hand has five of their own appendages.
A great book to use with this topic is Seeing Symmetry by Loreen Leedy.
15. Counting Bones
Put together, our two feet contain 52 bones! Show what 52 of something looks like in materials such as small building blocks or dominoes.
Practise counting up to 52 together. Share The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss.
16. Digesting Stomachs
Offer small sealable plastic bags and a variety of foods that are easily smashed, smushed, and mushed.
Children choose the foods for their plastic “stomachs,” seal them closed, and apply pressure with their hands to show what happens to foods when they are digested.
17. Measuring with Non-Standard Units
Kids can measure things around the room without tape measures or rulers. Encourage them to use their own feet to measure and compare distances or lengths of various large objects.
They can list these, by drawing pictures of the items on paper and noting the number of how many “feet” long they each measure.
Here are more measurement activities for preschoolers
18. Sorting Body Parts
Children cut/tear out pictures of various body parts from magazines.
They can then glue them into pre-set categories (heads, arms, hands, legs, feet, etc.) on a large, labeled sheet of paper to form a collage.
Cooking activities should be integrated where possible into every theme.
19. Designing Fruit and Veggie Faces
Provide kids the bases such as toasted bread, heated tortillas, or English muffins, to be spread with choices such as cream cheese or peanut/plant butters.
Offer a variety of healthy foods they can arrange for the facial features, such as raisins, carrot/banana coins, and apple slices.
20. Cutting and Spreading
While making easy snacks, such as cracker “sandwiches,” kids practise controlling their fingers, hands, and arms while using safe tools to cut and spread various food items.
Here are two more ideas to incorporate while children are playing freely.
21. Taking Heartbeat Breaks
During free play time, take occasional breaks for children to feel their chests for elevated heartbeats as compared to how they feel when at rest.
22. Spontaneous Exercising
While playing outside, children exercise and become even more aware of their bodies by running, jumping, crawling, skipping, and climbing.
As you can see, body theme activities can be carefully planned or spontaneous.
Pick and choose as you wish, even incorporating challenges into cleanup time: “lift the blocks using only your thumbs and pointer fingers” or “bulldoze the blocks toward the corner using only your feet!”
The opportunities for learning are endless. Here are more preschool themes if you need some fresh ideas.