Well I warned you. Yesterday was all business with oodles and oodles of Christmas crafts to get you and your little ones in the holiday spirit. No chitter chatter – just the goods.
But as promised, today I have some chitter chatter. Some stories. Some unimportant, just so you know, though you likely didn’t need to know, type of information. So bare with me. Or skip ahead if you are itching for a hand washing lesson.
As some of you know, I am back in the classroom part-time this year. It is a very different role than I have had before as I am only in the classroom one day a cycle. This means I don’t have my own classroom and instead I am teaching Health to a lot of classes. 3 different kindergarten classes, as well as a grade 1, 2, and 3 class. That is a lot of little people I get to see on my day at school.
Anyways, visiting all of these classes back to back has made me change the way I teach. I know need activities that I can easily pack up and tote with me to my next class. It has taken a while to find my groove, but I think these centers in a box are going to be my magic ticket!
This last week I tried 5 centers in a box with my Kindergartners, and it worked very well. I focused each center on one of the “Big 5 Things” that keep our bodies healthy. The Big 5 things are: Eat healthy food, drink lots of water, get enough sleep, get lots of exercise, and washing hands.
I will share with you all of the centers in the next day or two, but for today I wanted to share with you the most favourite center by far. I sort of thought it would be a hit so I tested it out at home. Ben fully agreed that this activity about washing hands was a great one.
The idea was inspired by Happy Hooligans melting frozen hands. Such a great, playful science lesson!
For this lesson on washing hands I filled some latex gloves with water and froze them overnight. Once they were frozen I added some ‘germs’ with washable marker. When I added the germs I talked to my little ones about how hands get full of germs during a day. I did this in a careful manner as to not frighten any little ones, but in a playful manner reminding them how important it is to wash hands before eating.
And then the fun! In the classroom we popped the frozen hands into the water table and let the little ones get to washing those germs right away.
At home I used a container for the frozen germy hand.
Ben used a wash cloth and some soap (as well as a turkey baster – you know, typical hand washing gear) to wash away all the germs.
Afterwards he rinsed those germs clear away with some water.
Of course this activity turned into lots of playful exploration with ice in the water table as well. Science and health do go hand in hand after all. (Hand in hand – ha!)
Thanks for sticking with me through all the chitter chatter.
I hope you are having a lovely week friends and you are keeping ahead of this cold and flu season! Thanks for reading.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I am a public health nurse, looking for some fun activities to share with the kids during our preschool wellness fairs, and wondered what you did for your other Big 5 activities??
Thanks!
Hi Katie! Thank you for your interest and note. After searching my site it appears I did not in fact write the post I intended! I do have all the pictures though and now it is on my to-do list! Here are the activities in the meantime: Plates drawn onto paper and covered in contact paper with playdough to create a healthy lunch or dinner, blocks with various foods taped onto them (printed off the computer) to build a ‘well-balanced tower’, the frozen hands we popped in the water table and were a huge hit, paper plate food group sort where we sorted lots of play food into the various food groups using paper plates, and there were two more but I can’t think of them off the top of my head! I will look through my picture and post soon!