Healthy Me!

One of our first science units is learning about how to be healthy. We talk about germs, how to take care of our teeth, how to exercise, and food groups. If you're thinking "Wow, that's a lot!" Well, you're not alone. It is a lot of information to cover in 3 weeks, but with the help of our Healthy Me Dolls, we are able to cover all the content in no time! Here's how: 

First we start with our blank Healthy Me Dolls: 

We add details to make our Healthy Me dolls unique. During this time we are also talking about being unique, so we make our Healthy Me dolls look unique to us and decorate shirts with what we like/love! 

Next, we talk about germs. As the students came back from PE, I gave them a small squirt of hand sanitizer with glitter and told them to rub it in and go. It doesn't take long for students to notice the blue dots all over their hands, desks, pencils, water bottles, etc. I tell the student that instead of glitter, imagine that the blue dots are germs. Look how easy the spread and they are everywhere! So what can we do to prevent germs? Where do they grow? Thanks to a cartoon on Discovery Education, we learn that germs grow in warm, wet places. Germs are everywhere but we can stay healthy by washing our hands! To finish, we add the germ on our Healthy Me doll. 

Next up: Teeth. After we learn about germs growing in warm, wet places, we move to our mouths... a warm, wet place! Teeth are so important as my first graders say, "without them you'd have to eat baby food and we aren't babies." How do we keep protect our teeth from germs? That's where the Crest Dental Protectors come in. 3 steps: 1. Brush twice a day 2. Floss 3. Use mouthwash. And of course, eating healthy foods keeps your teeth nice and strong. To finish off our day, we write one way we take care of our teeth and add it to our Healthy Me doll. 

Now that we talked about germs and teeth, now we're on to exercise. I have my students close their eyes and imagine if they sat in front of the TV forever and never got up to go outside or move  or even go to bed. I have them think about what they would look like and how they would feel. I tell them to imagine the scene in Wall-E where the people have to stand up from their chairs after a long time. We talk about why those characters struggle, why is important to move? After making a list of ways we exercise, we added our legs. 

Finally, we are on to food groups. With food groups, we start with what we know about healthy foods, what kinds of foods are healthy, why are healthy food important. I call on my good friends Annie and Moby at BrainPop Jr. to help me show the food groups. We built our bellies full of our healthy foods.

Finally our Healthy Me Dolls are done! Look at some of our final products.