Help you child learn about some key body parts with these Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes themed activities! (Early Years Framework 22-36 Months Age Band) – these activities can be adapted for babies & toddlers according to your child’s needs & development.
Give your child the Educational Edge, preparing them for nursery and beyond…
Contents:
- Treasure Box
- Sing Songs
- Doctor Role Play Area
- Simple Split-Pin Puppets
- Spin the Spinner
- Cameras & Mirrors
- Life-Sized Drawing
- Counting Body Parts
- Body Bingo
- Play-Dough Faces
- Decorating Faces
- Clay Hand Prints
- Recommended Books
Treasure Box
Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes is one of Sophie’s favourite rhymes so for the Treasure Box I found lots of fun items to introduce our ‘Body Parts’ theme.
In the Treasure Box I put:
- Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes Board Book
- Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes Rhyme Posters
- Photos of Sophie
- A doll
- A mirror
– young children love looking at themselves!
- Building Block
person
- In The Night Garden Upsy Daisy Figure
– a current favourite of Sophie’s!
For other ‘Body Parts’ themed books see Sophie’s ‘Recommended Books’ section for some great ideas!
Your little one will love exploring any of the items you choose to put in the box (make sure the items are ‘child safe’). Below are some ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes – Learning Body Parts’ games, songs & activities for you to do.
Let’s Sing!
Sing Songs to Learn Body Parts
Share these songs and actions with your child to help them learn simple body parts and develop their co-ordination skills! Click on the links for lyrics & actions.
Head Shoulders Knees & Toes Rhyme
If You’re Happy & You Know It Rhyme
My Body Song (Twinkl account needed)
Let’s Use Our Imaginations!
Doctor Role Play Area
Children of this age are beginning to really explore imaginative play.
WHAT YOU NEED: Doctor’s Toy Medical Kit
ADULT PREP: Set up the role-play area as you wish! I printed a Dr. Sophie’s Surgery notice; made an examination couch with a stool & cushion; a mini-desk with a wooden stool that had the pad & keyboard on; finally I left a few small bandages & plasters for the poorly patients & let Sophie organise her ‘doctors’ kit.
Imaginative play is a key tool in developing each of the 7 learning areas from the Early Years Framework, encouraging children to develop independence, empathy & self-confidence. With adult support it can extend their vocabulary & language &, when playing with their family & friends, develop social skills.
Let’s PLAY & LEARN!
Simple Split Pin Puppets
WHAT YOU NEED: Split Pin People Template; Split Pins
ADULT PREP: Print & cut out each of the different parts of the template. The stronger you can make the ‘puppets’ the better e.g. print on card and then stick the parts to more card and/or laminate them. 
Pierce a hole where the small dots appear on the template. Push the split pins through to attach the different arm and leg parts together. (Older children can help with this). Ready to play!
These ‘puppets’ have jointed limbs enabling your child to move the arms and legs. They can be used to act out the ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ song or ask your child to make the ‘puppet’ do other actions e.g. ‘make the puppet wave, put the puppets arms up, make the puppet do the splits’ and so on. You can decide the actions according to what your child already knows and what new actions you think they will be able to learn. It should give lots of fun and laughter!
Spin the Spinner
WHAT YOU NEED: The two Head Shoulders Knees & Toes – Spinners template; scissors; pencil or similar.
ADULT PREP: Print & cut out out the Spinners 
template. Make a hole through the centre of each spinner and push a pencil through.
Choose your spinner & get your child to spin it! Whichever body part the spinner lands on, get your child to point to it on themselves! Can they name the body part(s)?
Cameras & Mirrors
WHAT YOU NEED: Selection of mirrors / large mirror; camera.
Talk to your child about their reflection and the different body parts that they can see.
You could also take a photo of your child (or get them to do it!). Look at the photo together and point to their head, hands, arm and so on. This will be helping to reinforce or learn new key body part names extending their vocabulary and understanding.
Life-Sized Drawing
Remember the life-sized drawing we made in our All About Me theme?
WHAT YOU NEED: Life-sized drawing; Post-It Notes
ADULT PREP: Choose different body parts from the drawing that you want to focus on and stick a post-it note on top of it. Trace the shape. Optional – write the name of the body part. Put the post-it note to the side of the drawing ready to play.
With your child, see if they can match the body part drawn on the post-it note to the life sized drawing. Reinforce the name of the body part and get your child to repeat it back to you. Can they point to that body part on themselves?
Let’s Do Some Maths!
Counting Body Parts
WHAT YOU NEED: Head Shoulders Knees & Toes Number Cards; 4 small containers for sorting into; Head Shoulder Knees & Toes Counting Game body parts template
ADULT PREP: Print & cut out the Head Shoulders Knees & Toes Number Cards & the Head Shoulder Knees & Toes Counting Game body parts. Lay out the numbers from 1 to 10. Put a small container on each of the numbers 1, 2, 5 & 10. Put the ‘body parts’ in a pile.
Let your child choose a body part picture & help them to count how many parts there are. For example for the ‘eyes’ card say “Let’s count how many eyes there are in the picture – 1, 2 eyes”. Then ask them “How many eyes have you got? “1, 2 eyes”. Then ask how many eyes has mummy / daddy has got.
Now get them to sort the picture into the correct numbered container – so for eyes, that would be container number 2. They may already be able to recognise some numbers or you might have to help count the dots on the number card until you get the one that matches their body part card!
Body Bingo
WHAT YOU NEED: Head Shoulders Knees & Toes Body Bingo Cards; 
Scissors. Optional: Laminator
ADULT PREP: Print out the Body Bingo Game sheets. One sheet is for the Bingo playing card (red outlines). The other sheet needs to be cut up along the black dotted lines giving you a set of 6 cards. (If possible laminate these for durability so you can play many more times).
Play Body Bingo! You can play this in a number of ways, but initially it’s probably easiest to hold up the body part card & say the name. Then let your little one match it on their Bingo card – they can also try to say the name & point to the matching part on their body. When they are really secure in this do a swap & get them to be the ‘caller’ & you have the Bingo card!
Let’s Get Creative!
Play-Dough Faces
WHAT YOU NEED: Playdough Face Mats Templates; Play-Dough
ADULT PREP: Print Playdough Face Mats templates and preferably laminate.
Help your child manipulate the play-dough to cover the key parts of the printed face whilst naming the parts & the colours. This will develop fine motor skills, language development as you name & recognise the different parts and learn colour words.
Ask questions for example “Where is the mouth? What colour is the mouth? Can you find the red play-dough? Shall we make the mouth shape?”
Decorate a Face
WHAT YOU NEED: Paper plate; a range of craft materials to make different parts of the face – we used yellow foam
ADULT PREP: For Sophie, I drew the face and cut out all the different materials. With older children, you could just give them the prepared materials and let them design the face themselves.
Clay Hand Prints
Sophie had a Baby Casting Box 
Some of Sophie’s Recommended Books to Help With Learning Body Parts
- Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes… (Baby Board Books)
– Annie Kubler
- Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes – David Ellwand
- That’s Not My…
- Body (My First Board Book) – DK
- From Head to Toe
– Eric Carle
- Toes, Ears, & Nose! A Lift-The-Flap Book
– Karen Katz
- Parts – Tedd Arnold
- More Parts
– Tedd Arnold
- My First Gruffalo: Touch-and-Feel
– Julia Donaldson
- Where Is Baby’s Belly Button? – Karen Katz
Enter Your Details Below for your FREE Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes Advanced Plan:
Thank you so much! These are very helpful to my learners.
Fantastic ways to help them learn
Lovely ideas, I will definitely try some of these with my children. Thanks 🙂
great ideas, I will definitely try out the body part bingo with my little granddaughter
This rhyme is one of our favourites. I love how creative you’ve been with all the learning activities. We will be trying out a few
these are so lovely ideas! I’m sure the little ones love these games. Maybe some schools also take inspiration from this post haha x
Love treasure boxes, they are always a hit with the kids
These sound like great ideas, my son does a lot of these things at nursery. They have a doctor role play area that he adores x
These are brilliant ideas! I wish I’d been so imaginative when my son was little!
Lovely creative ideas. I like the fact they are so interactive x
I think there are so many good ideas here! I like the sound of the doctor role play!
What lovely ideas – have you got any ideas for boxes for older kids?! 😉
What a fun and creative way to learn and teach our little munchkins.
Some lovely idea here! I remember doing so many of these with my daughter about a year ago – my fave is the life size drawing!
What fabulous ways of learning about the body. I remember the days when I would be singing all the time to my children. they are a bit older now and mostly tell me to shut up!