Learning About Our Bodies

As I was trying to decide which activities to focus on this week, I decided it might be fun to try to stick with a theme. Our theme for this week was Bodies. We sang songs about our bodies (Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, My Hands, etc...) and checked out books about different body parts at the library. Erik's favorite was this one, I think because it has Elmo in it.
Erik got to do an activity I found on Productive Parenting, and I think he had a great time. We took some old wrapping paper left over from Christmas and laid it out on the floor with the colored side facing down. Erik laid down on it and we traced around him with a pencil. This was a bit tricky because he really wanted to see what I was doing, but we managed to get a full body trace.

There really is an outline there, I promise. I let Erik color on it for as long as he wanted, but you can't see that in the picture either. 

When Erik was done coloring the picture of himself, we traced his outline with a marker so we could see it better and taped the paper up on the wall so he could stand next to his life size picture of himself.

We spent a while pointing to different body parts on the drawing and on ourselves and then I had an idea to take it a little bit farther. I broke out a pad of stickers and we started sticking them all over the paper. Erik loved it. I'd guess that from the time we first traced him to the time he finally got tired of the stickers it was at least 45 minutes of solid entertainment. It was awesome!