So lets keep it simple. Let's explain what removing each part of the body does. Fat: changes 1 red into one white blood: changes 1 red into one white skull: +1 red skull heart: -2 random skulls (2 white, 2 red, 1 white/1red) meat: -1 white skull (not random) skin: changes 1 white into 1 red intestines: -2 white skull (may be random, always removes white for me) bones: no change to the corpse. Play it like any other board game. Fun way to review or teach parts of the body. Grammar review: articles, numbers, questions, verbs. How to play: Throw the dice and lets say it lands on number seven. Ask the child a question What is it? You can ask more than one question about the same box. You perform actions while singing the song “Row, Row, Row your Boat”. Can you answer the following questions? What is described in the song? How do you row a boat? What body parts are used in rowing a boat? What arm movements are used in rowing? What body movement is used in rowing? Do you want more activities? There is a parts of the body vocabulary practice section and a body parts words spelling section. Then, there are some games for conversation practice and games for listening practice. The question and answer games and grammar games are associated with the ESL Young Learners Curriculum - Unit 1. The questions and answers for this game are as. The origins of 'Miss Lucy Had a Steam Boat' started in the 1950's in Michigan. It can be sung as a song or even as a popular clapping, hand game played by children. The song provides a rhyming effect that replacing taboo words with a new lyrics such as 'and if you disconnect me, I'll kick you in your? Behind the refrigerator, there was a piece.
Benefits to Learning About Body Parts!12/8/2015 When we think back to our school days, or even days earlier if we can, we never really remember learning our body parts (except of course the song 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' which will never leave our memories). In the Intellidance® curriculum, we are deliberate in our teaching and understanding of the body from our brains to our toes, shaping children who are appreciative, aware, and in full control of their bodies. Ultimately, we are responsible for setting these little movers up to reach their fullest potential with more body control and less chance for challenges or insecurities down the road in school. As adults, we use our bodies without even thinking. This is called automticity. Automaticity is what allows our brains to function on a higher level: to multitask, to plan ahead, to create new ideas, to recall information, and of course: to LEARN new information. Automaticity is the goal of early childhood development. Hit those physical milestones (aka integrate your brain and body) so your brain can stop working so hard to control your body and start working on other things like reading, writing, creating, and counting. Needless to say, our bodies should not be taken for granted as our #1 learning tools. A child who hasn't yet figured out how to use a pencil (and there are many of them in the Kindergarten class) is NOT going to struggle to focus on anything but holding that pencil when sitting at a desk in the classroom. This results in distraction, confusion, disengagement, and potentially negative behavior. Back to body parts. Identifying body parts and being intentional about using them is a cognitive, physical, and language-enriching process. In early childhood, we learn through sensory discovery which happens by moving through and experiencing the world. With each physical ability we aquire, we become more aware of something else we can do/see/explore. Our bodies are essentially our toolkit for discovery. (If I reach my arm and grasp my hand, I can grab! If I stand up, I can see more things from a higher point of view! If I bend my knees and swing my arms, I can jump like a bunny!) As your little one is discovering their body, be sure to notice this learning and support it by labeling, touching, and moving body parts in isolation. And especially those body parts that aren't naturally used. The more awkward/unfamiliar movement you can practice (such as walking without bending your knees or rolling like a straight log, or crossing opposite arms to touch opposite feet), the more the brain is flexed. Another important aspect of encouraging body learning is that it helps children develop an appreciation for their body and a confidence in themeselves which motivates them to reach new heights. Teaching little ones to love their bodies at a young age helps them grow into children and adults who WANT to keep their bodies strong, healthy, and safe so they can continue to do all the things they love to do. Eventually, they will learn that a happy body is a happy me and that is a lesson we as adults struggle with. Maybe if we start emphasizing this a bit more in early childhood, our kids will be more inclined to cherish and take care of their bodies through life! |
Most courses for young and very young learners have at least one unit on body parts vocabulary like “hand” and “foot” in them, and the few that don’t certainly should. Not only is this topic great for classes of all ability levels (just add “right little finger” or “thigh” if they seem to know it all), but it is also vital for giving classroom instructions in English during the rest of the course, e.g. while explaining action songs or physical games. There are also loads of games, craft activities, stories and songs including this language point that native speaker kids love and which can be easily be adapted for EFL classes. This article will deal with games and a few craft activities, and other articles on songs and stories will follow. This article will also illustrate another great point about games involving body vocabulary, which is how many other bits of target language they can be linked in with. Examples below include prepositions, classroom vocabulary, any vocabulary that can be represented by flashcards or realia, have got, and possessive S.
1. Whose body?
Give students spoken or written explanations of animals that mainly consist of descriptions of their body parts and get them to guess which animals are being explained. This is most fun with the teacher holding a flashcard or plastic animal so students can’t see it and starting with clues that are less than obvious, e.g. “It has got four legs”. To discourage random shouting out of answers, you could take away one point for each wrong guess. The animals that you choose to use in this game should have at least one distinctive point about their body that can be the final clue, e.g. “It’s got eight legs” (spider or octopus), “Its tail is a circle and it’s got two long teeth” (rabbit) or “It’s got a long neck” (giraffe). The same game is possible with specific characters the students know such as monsters (e.g. Pokémon), robots, cartoon characters or superheroes.
2. Whose body? Two
Show students pictures of just one part of an animal’s body, and they have to guess which animal it is and/ or which part of the body it is. This can be done by cutting up flashcards or other pictures, by covering all but one part of an animal, by using an OHP and covering most of the picture, or similar things with a “spotlight” or similar function on an IWB (interactive whiteboard). Alternatively, the teacher or student can draw or trace the body parts from pictures, or draw them from imagination.
3. Which body part?
A variation of the games above is to use animals, prepositions, shapes etc to describe the body part that the flashcard you have shows until students guess which part it is, e.g. “It’s on your face between your eyes and mouth and elephants have a very long one” for “Nose”. With a high level class, it might even be possible to describe a particular animal’s body part.
4. Body Pictionary
Rather than describing body parts, the teacher or students could just draw them. To add more language to this, the Pictionary prompt cards should have whole phrases or sentences such as “It has got three legs” or “It has two very long legs and two very short legs”. This is more fun if the sentences are a little nutty, e.g. “The car has ears”. You could also draw a whole person or animal with students shouting out when they notice the part that you have drawn wrong (as you were instructed to by the prompt card), e.g. “A giraffe has a long neck, not a short neck!”, “A man has one nose, not two noses!”, or “Your eyes are between your ears, not above your ears!”
5. Crazy body mimes
Odd sentences can also be used to liven up miming to practise body parts vocabulary, e.g. “I have ten arms” (pointing to your arms and then counting to ten on your fingers) or “My nose is on my stomach” (pretending to pull your nose off your face and put it there).
6. React if it’s crazy
Another way of using crazy bodies is to read out things about a person or animal and ask students to race to react in a particular way as soon as they hear something strange, e.g. “I have two necks” or “My eyes are white in the middle”. Ways of reacting include holding up your hand, standing up, touching the part of your body that was mentioned, or touching something in the classroom. You can also play Normal/ Strange Stations, in which students run and touch one of two walls depending on what they hear, e.g. the wall marked Normal for “The man has ten fingers” or the wall marked Strange for “The giraffe has a short neck”.
The Body Parts Game Tug Boats Do It Play
7. Making monsters
Kids love drawing monsters, and there are many good ways of turning that into a game with lots of language practice. One is to have two dice, one with body parts written on the six sides and the other with the usual numbers. Students then draw the combination that comes up, e.g. giving their monster six eyes. Students can make these dice themselves for writing practice and a fun craft activity. Similar games are possible with a spinner (a cardboard hexagon on a pencil), or with a ball thrown at flashcards or words written on the whiteboard. You can also replace the numbers with names of animals, so that the monster has a “bird’s head”, “lion’s tail”, etc.
A fun writing version of this is to adapt chain writing (= consequences) to this language point. The first team writes a sentence describing the head, then folds the paper back so that what they have written cannot be seen, then passes it to the next team for them to write a description of the neck. When the whole animal has been described by being passed around the class, the next team unfolds the piece of paper then draws the whole animal.
8. Actions
Students follow written or spoken instructions such as “Put your finger on your shoulder” and “Put your toes on your forehead”. Some more complex and fun variations are listed below.
9. Simon says
This very well-known variation on doing the actions that they are told simply involves only doing them if they follow certain words, traditionally meaning ignoring “Touch your head” but quickly doing “Simon says put your chin on your shoulder”. You can replace the words “Simon says” with more useful classroom phrases such as “You should…” or “The teacher says….”
10. Chain actions
Write the first action on the board, e.g. “Clap your hands”. When students have raced to do that action, add a second action underneath, e.g. “Put your right foot on your left knee”. When you say “Ready, steady, go”, the students race to do those two actions in the right order while saying what is written on the board. This can continue until you have ten to fifteen actions on the board. This game is particularly good for mixed reading/ non-reading classes, as the students can read the actions, use whatever reading clues (e.g. first letters) that they know to help remind them, or just memorize them from their position in the sequence. This game can be tied in with action songs or other classroom activities by making the last actions in the chain ones that you will use in your instructions.
The Body Parts Game Tug Boats Do It Go
11. Whole body slap
Slap is a very well known game in which students race to be the first to put the palm of their hand on a flashcard. It also works well with pictures or words in their open textbooks. You can practise body vocabulary and have more fun by asking them to touch the pictures with other parts of their body rather than just their palms, e.g. their elbows or little fingers.
12. Whole body run and touch
This is another well-known game that you can add body vocab to with a slight variation. In the original students compete to touch something on the whiteboard or in the classroom as quickly as possible, e.g. “Touch a chair!” You can do the same thing while asking them to “Touch the table with your knees”, “Touch the window with your nose”, etc.
13. Whole body run and count
This is a slight variation on Whole Body Run and Touch where students touch every example of the object you tell them to and also count them off, e.g. counting all six windows as they run around and touch them. You can add body vocabulary to this by asking them to touch classroom objects with particular parts of their body, or by touching and counting body parts, e.g. “How many boys’ heads?” If this is likely to get out of hand, they could just point and count rather than touching, or just touch and count the examples on their own body or of one person on their team.
14. That many fingers
Another game that involves numbers is putting them in teams and asking them to show you a particular number of body parts by working together, e.g. “Hold up 22 fingers”. To make sure everyone is involved, tell them that the number must include at least one from each person in the team. This can be extended to include instructions like “Only seven feet on the carpet”, “Wiggle seven arms” and “Twelve elbows under the window”.
15. Not just hands up
This isn’t exactly a game, but I like to vary asking students to put their hands up (to be allowed to guess or be next to play the game) with asking them to do other actions such as “Left foot up” or “Hands in your socks”.
16. Body balancing
In this variation, rather than putting their body parts in particular positions, they put objects or flashcards that they have on the places on their bodies that you tell them to. If they can, they then take away their hands and balance that object there as long as they can, for example responding to “Put your toys on your shoulders. No hands!” This is more fun if you can also use prepositions, e.g. grasping things “Under your knee” or “Between two little fingers”, but you can easily present those prepositions while doing the game if they haven’t done them before. This is a great way of linking body parts practice to a previous stage where you show or describe flashcards or realia and give them to students as they shout out the name. Alternatively, the students can request an object because they think it will be easy to balance. After balancing on the body, students can run around the classroom trying to put their thing or card “Under the door”, “Between the teacher and the whiteboard”, etc.
17. What can you do with your body
This game challenges the students both mentally and physically and brings in loads of other language such as classroom objects and actions. One way of playing it is just naming a body part or two and asking students to volunteer things that they can do with them, e.g. “I can catch a ball with four fingers” or “I can whistle with four fingers”. Another way is for the teacher to say the action and students to put up their hands if they think they can do it. They then get five points if they can really do it or lose one point if they can’t.
18. Body tracing
There are several fun ways of using tracing around a body part (onto the whiteboard or paper) to practise the language. One is to trace around someone’s whole body on a very large piece of paper (or several A3 sheets glued together) and label as many body parts in as much detail as they can (e.g. “This is Jim’s left little finger”). Another is for teams to race to trace the part that you say as quickly as possible, e.g. “Trace a thumb on the board”. Alternatively, students can guess which body part and/ or whose it is from a tracing. It is also possible to play similar games with drawings or digital cameras.
19. Really label the body
Even more fun than labelling a full-sized copy of someone’s body is labelling the real thing. The easiest way is for one person from each team to stand in the centre of their group, and the others to write on Post Its and stick them on that person’s clothes or body. An alternative is to write the body parts on bigger pieces of paper and join these to the person with bits of string. While teaching a summer school class on the beach, we even did it with water based markers directly on people’s skin! This game is a good opportunity to practise classroom questions like “What is this (in English)?” and “How do you spell…?”
20. Brainstorming race
Shout out or write up a description that is true of several body parts (e.g. “It’s little” or “It’s between your chin and hips”), and ask them to brainstorm ones that fit that category in groups. Depending on their level, they could draw the body parts, write the words, grab and show flashcards, or just shout them out.
See also: Frankenstein Body Parts Song