Early Literacy Connection: Healthy Bodies Make and Take

Last night I co-presented a make and take workshop on the theme of 'Healthy Bodies'. In this workshop format, early years educators were invited to come, eat dinner, then make and take early literacy/group time resources that they can use in their programs.

Because the workshop theme was 'Healthy Bodies', it was fitting to contact the local health unit for resources to be given to participants. I was able to pick up some great brochures at no cost! The premise was that each participant would take one of each brochure. Then, if a parent of a child in their program has a question or concern about a certain health topic, the participant could contact the Health Unit and order multiple copies to be given out to parents of the children who attend their program.

Here is a list of the resources I was able to get:

- Preventing the Spread of Childhood Illnesses

- Raising Healthy Eaters

- Splash into Safety

- Home Safety Checklist

- Have a Ball Together

As for the Make and Take activities, here is what we did:

1) The Very Hungry Caterpillar story retell. This story serves as a great jumping off point for discussions about healthy eating. The caterpillar eats some healthy foods, then he eats junkfood and gets a stomachache.

To make this yourself, you will need all the items in the picture below, plus a hot glue gun. First, to make a caterpillar, colour your regular clothes pin green using permanent marker. Next, using the hot glue gun, glue the balls to the clothes pin in the order shown below. The red ball goes at the opening of the clothes pin - this becomes the caterpillar's "mouth". Then, use the small pieces of foam to cut out eyes, a nose, and antenna (like how they are shown on the cover of the book). Use the glue gun to stick them on.

Now, use the other clothes pin to make your butterfly. Use some scraps of felt you may have to make some wings. Make antenna out of the blue foam and glue it on.

Create a cocoon for your butterfly and caterpillar using a 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of brown foam. Just fold in in half and cut out the outline of the cocoon. Use your hot glue gun to seal around the edges of the cocoon. Use a black permanent marker to drawn lines on your cocoon. I used the picture in the book as a guide.

Cut out and laminate the food cards. The caterpillar will "eat" these by placing them in his mouth as you read the story.

Before telling the story to your group of children, place the butterfly in the cocoon so that when the caterpillar goes in, you can exchange it for the butterfly.

2)Fitness Cube and die. Children are movers and doers. This game is a great way to get all children participating in "get fit" activities. To play, children take turns rolling each cube. If they get a "3" and a "one foot hop", they would do a one foot hop three times.

To make the fitness cube, start by folding your cube into a cube. Fasten with packing tape on each end. Then, cut out the pictures of the children doing various activities. Glue them onto the cube. You may also like to add the words shown in the picture to add the extra literacy bit. If you have a younger group of children, I would use the packing tape to "laminate" the cube to prevent too much wear and tear.

To make the number cube, fold up and tape the box in the same way as before. Then stick the colour stickers (I got mine at Dollarama!) to the cube in the same way they would be shown on a die. Laminate in the same way as before, if needed.

3) Ribbon stick. Put on some music and see how children move around with the stick. Encourage them to twirl and make the ribbon dance.

Materials:
- 1 Wooden Dowel (I used a 3/4 x 12in. wooden dowel)
- 1 Small square of all-purpose sand paper to sand the dowel
- Acrylic Paint (optional) to paint the dowel giving it extra pizzazz
- 1 Small Eye Screw
- Ribbon
- Hair dryer (optional)
- Clear coat (optional)

Instructions:
Sand the dowel. Using your small square of all-purpose sand paper lightly sand your dowel to smooth out any rough spots.

Attach Eye Screw. Attach eye screw to the top of the dowel. If you do this before you paint it gives you something to hold onto.

Paint the dowel. Paint the dowel with a sassy acrylic color using an even stroke from bottom to top and covering the entire circumference of the dowel as well as the top and bottom bases of the dowel. Paint dries in less than 20 minutes on a warm sunny day in a house with no air conditioning. You can use a hair dryer to speed up the drying process. One coat should be sufficient.

Optional Ribbon Sewing. Pull a small amount of the ribbon through the eye screw and do a quick stitch finish to. You can also tie it, but sewing might extend the longevity of the ribbon especially seeing how much flinging and twirling it's going to go through.