Body Blocks - Activity Instructions

Activity description

Children explore early numeracy concepts by moving their bodies in yoga, dance, and fine motor activities. This is a ‘Find Out’ activity following on from reading Embrace Your Body, by Taryn Brumfitt.

Tune In

We all have such amazing bodies. Today we’re going to have fun moving our bodies and seeing what we can do with them. Let’s start with some yoga poses to warm up our bodies.

Direct children to find an open space. If you have yoga mats, it’s a great idea to bring them out to make sure everyone has their own space to move. Using the Yoga Cards, direct students to try the different poses, seeing how tall, short, long, big and small they can make their bodies.

Then ask children to return to the group and have the entire group manipulate their bodies in different ways.

“Can you all make your body as small as you can?”
“Can you all make your body as BIG as you can?”
“Can you make your body as flat as you can?”
“Can you make your body as round as you can?”

Reiterate the idea that although we are all different, our bodies can all do lots of different things in lots of different ways and it’s important we EMBRACE our bodies!

Find Out

Now our bodies have warmed up with some gentle stretching, let’s get dancing! Let’s play a game of musical statues with the children. Play the following song from the Embrace Your Body book.

Embrace Kids Song (music.youtube.com/watch?v=_G6YgFxSPmM&si=UjG4YgVgcdzUiqbr)

When the music stops, direct the children to do the following actions.

Stretch up high and make your body as tall as you can!
Crouch down low and make your body as short as you can!
Spread out wide and make your body as big as you can!
Squash up and make your body as small as you can!
Curl up and make your body as round as you can!
How square can you make your body? This is a tricky one!

Phew! That was a work out! Let’s give our bodies some rest and use our hands

Take Action

Invite children to explore the blocks, either the wooden blocks or the EMBRACE BODY BLOCKS. Encourage children to build a ‘body’ using the blocks provided.

Children working independently can lead to rich one-on-one discussions, whereas working in a small group allows children to witness different ideas and perspectives at play.

Prompt the children with questions such as:

Can you build a body using these blocks?
What block will you use for the head, legs, torso?
How is your block body similar or different to your friends?
Where did you get your ideas from to build your body this way?
Did you build it to make it similar to your body?
If this body was a real person, what would it be really good at doing?
What is the tallest/shortest/biggest/smallest body you can make with these blocks?

Allow children ample opportunity to create multiple ‘bodies’, all with differing features, heights, sizes, shapes and colours, as they explore the idea that all bodies are different and all bodies are wonderful!

Children working independently can lead to rich one-on-one discussions, whereas working in a small group allows children to witness different ideas and perspectives at play.

Prompt the children with questions such as:

Can you build a body using these blocks?
What block will you use for the head, legs, torso?
How is your block body similar or different to your friends?
Where did you get your ideas from to build your body this way?
Did you build it to make it similar to your body?
If this body was a real person, what would it be really good at doing?
What is the tallest/shortest/biggest/smallest body you can make with these blocks?

Allow children ample opportunity to create multiple ‘bodies’, all with differing features, heights, sizes, shapes and colours, as they explore the idea that all bodies are different and all bodies are wonderful!

Body Blocks

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Target Age

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