Body Outline

How could we not remember to check on our skeleton today? This was the first thing we wanted to know. So, we took out our skeleton and laid it on a towel to measure. Yesterday, we recorded its length as 30 centimeters and today it was 40! It’s getting “bigger”. At this point, our teacher asked us what we would like to do with our skeleton. So, we paused and thought for a moment and then took turns in speaking our minds. Ra suggested, “We can put him in the water again”, to which Wi agreed and said, “Then he will grow again!”.  Our discussion got better and better as our friend E pointed out that “If we put it back in, it will be bigger than this (referring to the container)”. At this time, we started to brainstorm what steps to take when that happens. Then Ma thought that we would just have to leave it in its container and “It’s just going to bend by himself!”. Excellent idea, wasn’t it? On the other hand, Ja had a different suggestion. He said, “How about you put him in the water? Then it grows and then we can bend him after when come in the morning”.  We are so happy that all of our brains are working that makes great ideas come alive in our circle time! Our body is indeed a working machine.

Discussion continued as to what we would do with skeleton. Some say we should keep him in the same container and just see what happens tomorrow. At this point, we tried moving our skeleton to a bigger container. Suddenly, Ma’s eyes lit up and excitedly said, “ How about if we fill this box with more water?”, to which the class happily agreed to! We had our friends who volunteered to pour more water in our container until we thought that it had enough water and space to grow into. For now, we got settled into putting back our skeleton in a bigger container with more water in it. We are so excited to see the changes, if there’s any tomorrow!

As we continue to explore on the idea that “our body is a working machine”, we discussed what parts of our body we could see with our eyes. The ones that stood out in our sharing time are eyelids and eyelashes. Some did not seem to be aware where these are so, we tried to gently touch our eyelashes. Mo commented, “But my eyelashes keep on moving!”. Wi added that we also have “lipstick” as part of our face. We love how we could freely express what we think in Flowers Class.

More and more excitement started to fill our classroom as our discussion moved from the face part to the leg part. As a class, we all agreed that we have two legs and two feet but we were quite divided as to the number of toes we have and the names of our foot parts. It was a brilliant idea that we took off our shoes and socks and look at them and see what we have there! Ma was able to help us learn what ankle (and not “uncle”) and heel are. We had a fun time as we touched our ankles and heels and counted our toes as we touched each of them! We are so sure that we have two feet but ten toes!

After playing the “Please Game” which has the same mechanics as Simon Says, we grouped ourselves into 3. Each group picked one friend whose body will be traced on a big white paper. We then took turns in drawing the outline of our friends. The best part was discussing what body parts we would like to draw on our body outlines and then labeling them, too. It was great to see how each group came up with different body parts. Also, we were able to sound out the beginning sound of the labels and successfully matched them into their corresponding body parts as well! In fact, some of our friends were able to read/sight read the words, too.

We were so engrossed with our activity that we didn’t realize that it was almost lunch time. We are looking forward to working on our body outlines again tomorrow. Perhaps by now, you must have already known that we love learning about our bodies!

By the way, for our free play we had so much fun working on our fine motor skills and our imagination at the same time. We built towers using Kapla blocks and a variety of things and vehicles with Lego. Of course, we love dressing up as princess, police officer and chefs, too! 

Have you heard about kamishibai? We heard the same question today and our friend, Yu gave us a very clear explanation about it. She said that “It is like a storybook, but you read on the inside and then look on the outside!”. And that is exactly what it is. Thank you so much for telling us about kamishibai, Yu! The story that we heard was about being kind to our friends because it makes our friends feel happy.

We would like to thank Mo for kindly showing us his cricket and grasshopper:)  It was so cool to see how these bugs move while inside the bug box!

We are all excited about all the things we are going to learn tomorrow.

Lots of love,

Flowers Class Children