Over the last week, the Pre school children have had the opportunity to join in with many activities to support ‘Healthy body, Happy me’ week. During group times, the children have been discussing the importance of looking after their bodies and how they are able to do so. Some of the children were suggesting which exercises they could do such as jogging, stretching, Yoga and even “Pilates like my mummy”. Some other children were debating between themselves which foods are healthy to eat and which foods are not so healthy. This quickly turned the conversation on to which snacks the children like to eat and when one of the children suggested a biscuit, another child reminded them, “But you mustn’t eat too many of them because they have sugar in them”. The children engaged in an activity where they were able to identify foods from the home corner that they thought should be in the healthy column and which foods belong in the unhealthy foods column. One of the children looked at the unhealthy column and suggested, “But it is ok if we eat those foods sometimes, we just can’t eat them all of the time”.
Throughout the week, the children have joined in with many exercise classes, observing the effects of exercise on their bodies. After a short spout of exercising one day, some of the children held their hands to their chest and laughed together as they detected their heart beat and how fast it was beating. Remembering a previous conversation, one of the children suggested, “Remember if you take a deep breath and breathe out, your heart will slow down again, that’s because you get more air in your lungs”. When the children followed these instructions, they were soon enough ready to get going again and again, each time detecting their heart rate when they took a break.
As well as many activities and conversations surrounding the physical side of our bodies, the children have been discussing their emotions and what makes them feel a certain type of emotion and then following up with what they think they could do to help with each emotion. The story book ‘The Colour Monster’ was used many times throughout these discussions where the children were able to identify a colour in relation to an emotion and letting each other know which colour they felt and what made them feel this way. The children were able to identify many emotions including happy, excited, worried and sad and listened intently to their friends when they spoke about how they felt.
