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My Body, Your Body, Everybody Has a Body

© Holly Gumpher

Do you remember the first time you saw your own blood? I don't, but I do remember the first time my daughter saw hers. We were on a long driving trip and had stopped at a rest stop. It was summer time, and she was wearing sandals. She tripped over the doorjamb coming out of the rest stop and skinned her knee on the concrete sidewalk. I scooped her up and carried her, sobbing, to the van. She looked at her knee and stopped crying. "Mommy, what's that red stuff?" she asked.

Our bodies are complex organisms and how they work is fascinating, even to adults. Imagine how a kid must feel when first cognizant of the wonders of the human body. When my daughter was an infant she used to laugh after every sneeze. I suppose a sneeze was an amusing feeling to someone just getting used to it.

Nowadays she delights in taking off all of her clothes and running around the house. To teach her a modicum of decorum while not squashing her spirit, we've agreed that she may play naked in her room all she wants, but needs to be clothed to be in the rest of the house.

A lot of what our children learn from birth through their preschool years is directly related to their bodies. First they learn to recognize hunger and how to ask for it to be remedied.

Next, we teach them the parts of their body using the "Where's your....?" game. "Where's your nose?" "Where's your mouth?"

They learn to walk and run and climb, developing their gross motor skills. We give them pencils and crayons and scissors and they start to develop fine motor skills.

Eventually (finally!) they master potty training, gaining a huge degree of control over their body! Hurray!!!

Preschoolers are interested in their body and are prime candidates for mini-lessons on things like the five senses (we see with our eyes, smell with our nose, feel with our fingers, taste with our tongue, and hear with our ears), what is inside their body (bones, blood, muscles, heart), and how to stay healthy (exercise, eat good food). How much easier to impress these things on their minds now while they still find it interesting than to wait until they are busy with more important things like the latest Backstreet Boys concert dates!

Books you can read with your preschooler about the human body include Dr. Suess' The Foot Book and Hair, and the Berenstain Bears Too Much Junk Food and He Bear, She Bear.