From the beating heart to the incredible 5 senses, young minds are naturally curious about what makes their bodies tick. Therefore, exploring the wonders of the human body can be a delightful and educational adventure for preschoolers. Read on to find out how these human body activities for preschoolers will engage your young learners.
While teaching young children about the human body can be an exciting experience it can also feel overwhelming because there is so much to cover. You may even wonder, how does one go about teaching human anatomy to preschoolers?
The answer is our complete bundle of human body activities for preschoolers! This bundle of learning activities provides you with age-appropriate preschool activities to embark on this exciting journey of helping preschoolers learn about the body and comes complete with a detailed lesson plan to guide you through each activity.
My Body Theme Preschool Activities
You may think that teaching preschoolers about the anatomy of the human body is only meant for a science lesson. However, the human body can provide opportunities for learning in all subject areas.
Just as you would use back to school or the holidays to create a unit theme, you can also use the human body as a theme to be covered in all subject areas. Yes, this includes math, reading, and even circle time.
We created each learning activity in the these human body activities for preschoolers to help you explore how the body can be used to teach students across several disciplines. This bundle includes five different My Body themed activities – each in a different area of learning.
Here are the five body parts activities for preschoolers you will find in this learning bundle:
- Me and My Amazing Body Read Aloud
- My Body Parts + 5 Senses Exploration Stations
- My Body Math and Literacy Centers
- My Body Preschool Circle Time Activities
- My Body Skeleton STEM Activity for PreK
Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these learning activities
Me and My Amazing Body Read Aloud
When it comes to choosing a human body book to use with young kids, there is none better than Me and My Amazing Body by Joan Sweeney. This book is designed to help children understand the complex workings of their own bodies in a simple and accessible way.
Through vivid illustrations, kids get to explore human body systems such as the skeletal system, muscular system, circulatory system, and more. Moreover, Sweeney’s use of clear, age-appropriate language, introduces each child to various bodily systems in an effective way.
Me and My Amazing Body is truly a wonderful resource to help teachers (and parents) foster children’s curiosity and understanding of their own physical selves. To further support your students’ exploration of the body we created several reading activities to use alongside the book.
Just like all of our read alouds, these reading activities are focused on helping each student develop their literacy skills by engaging with the text in various ways. Over the course of several days, each student gets to revisit the human body through text-based questions, vocabulary, and even a quiz and a craft.
Whether you choose to kick off your My Body Theme unit with this read aloud or use it towards the end of the unit, your preschoolers will be fascinated with what this book teaches them about their bodies
Identifying Body Parts Activities
When identifying parts of the body we couldn’t think of a more age-appropriate or fun way to do this than through exploration stations.
The exploration stations we designed give kids several opportunities to not only learn about the anatomy but also use their body parts to explore the body system through different sensory activities. Take a look below to see how these nine stations work together to help children identify and explore different parts of the body.
My Body Parts Exploration Stations
- Explore: Explore and read the pages in order to match the cards to the photographs and the body parts to the body.
- Color: Use the code to color the pictures.
- Match: Match the body parts to the body.
- Make: Use play dough to make the body picture on the cards.
- Play: Spin the spinner and build a skeleton.
- Measure: Use blocks to measure a partner’s body part.
- Sort: Place body picture cards on the correct mat.
- Clip: Clip the sense that matches the picture.
- Write/Draw: Draw or write to label your body.
Human Body Preschool Worksheets
When thinking about what kind of worksheets to use when teaching preschoolers about the human body, the most common thought is probably around a skeleton. While labeling parts of a skeleton or body on a worksheet is definitely one way to have students learn about parts of the body it is not the only way.
Beyond the basic human body worksheets students can also explore the human body in creative ways. In addition to using exploration stations to explore through the 5 senses, we found several creative ways to engage young learners in exploring human anatomy through math and literacy.
Since one of the first ways students learn to count is by using their fingers, why not incorporate this into exploring the body?
Not only do preschoolers get to revisit counting fingers through these math centers, but they also get to explore how graphing, measuring, and shapes can all be connected to the human body.
Take a look at how they will do this in our 8 math centers for the human body.
- Count and Clip: Counting Fingers
- Counting Objects: Counting Bones
- Graphing: Graphing Self Care
- Measurement: Body Part Measurement
- Comparing Numbers: Clip It Healthy Lunch Boxes
- Pattern Cards: Body Part Patterns
- Shape Match: Spin and Cover Soap Bubble Shapes
- Order by Size: Small and Big
My Body Literacy Centers
Along with connecting to the body through math, students can also make additional connections through literacy. In addition to the reading activities they get to participate in during the read aloud, we have provided several focused literacy activities.
These literacy activities are bundled together with our math centers. Therefore, providing you and your students with a variety of learning activities that continue to teach about the human body in different ways.
Here is a quick peek at the My Body Literacy centers we created for you:
- Rhyme Time: Flip and Match
- Uppercase and Lowercase: Self Care Match
- Counting Syllables: Body Part Cards
- Letter Writing & Fine Motor: X-Ray Letter Writing
- Initial Sounds: Bone Match
- Color Match: Matching Fingerprints
- On My Own Craft: Make Germs
- Writing Own Name: Bathtub Craft
- Sensory Bin: Inside My Body
- Free Write: My Body Writing Center
My Body Circle Time
When we think of a preschool classroom, we always think of circle time! Circle time truly is the best time of day as it provides teachers and students with many opportunities to build a positive classroom community. Moreover, it offers teachers extra time to review important daily skills.
Just like any preschool theme can be incorporated into circle time, so can the exploration of the human body. However, we know that as a busy teacher, you may not have time to create all of the circle time activities you want. Therefore, we did it for you!
Take a look at the My Body Circle time lessons that we created. Just like all of the My Body theme activities, these are ready to teach.
- 2 reread/review the text activities
- 3 responding to text activities
- song lyrics with a familiar tune + 2 corresponding activities
- pocket chart poem + 2 corresponding activities
- 3 game-style whole class activities
- 5 corresponding independent worksheets
- 1 emergent reader
Each of these circle time activities can be printed or projected. In addition to the actual activities, we also included a teacher overview and detailed circle time lesson plans to help you easily implement these activities.
Skeleton PreK STEM Challenge
A human body preschool bundle would not be complete without a science activity! Rather than having kids do a science experiment, we created a PreK STEM challenge.
This PreK STEM challenge follows our Engineering Process that guides young kids through the beginning stages of STEM exploration. This detailed process makes it easy for young learners to understand STEM concepts and for teachers to teach STEM.
In this STEM activity, preschoolers are asked to build a model of a human skeleton that includes bones in the correct places. Along with detailed lesson plans of how to support students in this process, we also included a list of materials to use.
This list is teacher friendly and prioritizes materials that are already common in the preschool classroom. Remember, we are here to provide you with learning resources that are easy to implement.
My Body Preschool Lesson Plans
As you can see, we have created enough lesson plans to help you implement not just one human body activity, but several. Therefore, if you choose to buy the full bundle of my body preschool lesson plans you will be ready to teach about the human body for an entire month.
However, we know that as a teacher you may already have some lesson plans and activities that you love to use! So, to make it easy to pair your current favorites with some new activities you can also purchase each of the My Body lesson plans on their own.
Whatever human body activities you choose to teach your preschoolers, we wish you a wonderful journey into the exciting world of human anatomy!
