“Point to your nose.”
“Where are your eyes?”
“Show me your feet.”
How many of you have heard one or all of these commands at your child’s doctor’s office or therapy office? These are very common commands that fall on most developmental checklists and standardized tests for language and communication. How many times a day does someone ask you, “Where are your feet?” or “Show me your toes?”…..never. Often therapists work on learning body parts within these direct commands because that's how they are tested on standardized tests. Today we are going to provide you with a variety of fun ways to work on your child learning their body parts through music, play, weather routines and their daily activities.
Music
There are a lot of different songs that you can sing throughout your day to help your child learn their body parts. At the KidSpeak office our favorite three are:
“Head Shoulders Knees and Toes”: We sing this song while pointing to our body parts, while pointing to our kids’ body parts, while pointing to a teddy bear’s body parts, etc.
We also use the visual below. Sing and point to the pictures:
Once our kids have this song down, we then change up the words like, “head shoulders elbow tummy, elbow tummy,” “head shoulders legs and ankles, legs and ankles,” etc.
“Spider On the Floor” by Raffi: All our kids LOVE the “Spider On the Floor” song. We sing this song while moving pretend spiders on our body parts and they love it.
http://www.last.fm/music/Raffi/_/Spider+on+the+Floor
“Simon Says”: We sing a fun “Simon Says” song …..another favorite. We show the kids pictures of their body parts to point to while singing (“Simon Says touch your hair,” etc.). Once they have that down, we then practice two things: 1) changing up the body part order and 2) having the child telling us what body parts to point to.
Once the kids understand this song, it is a great transition to the real game of Simon Says.
Play
We then begin to play with toys that have body parts associated with them such as:
Mr. Potato Head: We play with Mr. Potato Head by working on requesting the different body parts (“I want eyes”) or making choices (“eyes or nose”). When the Potato Head is constructed, we work on pretend play such as Mr. Potato eating, having a tea party, dancing and more.
Baby Dolls: We wash the baby doll. We practice washing and drying all the baby’s body parts. You can also do this with stuffed animals.
Weather Frog and Weather Bear
Each day we sing a “Weather Song” and talk about the weather (is it hot, cold, rainy, snowy, etc.). Then we dress our weather frog or weather bear while focusing on language such as, “shoes on feet,” “hat on head.” etc. We point to the visuals and model the language for our kids. After a short while, they begin to initiate and respond where to put the clothes on the bear.
Daily Activities
The last way we work on body parts is through our daily activities. We have our families focus on using short one to three-word phrases paired with a visual as they take a bath, get dressed, undress, etc. Such as “dirty arms,” “wash arms,” “arms clean,” “shoes on feet,” “on feet,” “feet” and more.
We hope that you have fun learning body parts with your child in a fun child-centered way!
~KidSpeak, LLC
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