Preschool Health Games

It is important to teach preschoolers about the importance of good health in a fun way so they'll have a good foundation upon which to build for the rest of their lives. Games should be educational, informative, practical, and meaningful for very young children.

Which Bag?

• Get two large, paper bags. Select two children to draw a happy face on one bag and a sad face on the other. Make sure each face has a big mouth. Cut out the mouth.

  While two of the students are working on the bags, have the other children look for pictures of food in magazines. Some of the children can also draw some foods. Help them cut out at least 20 pictures.

  Discuss food in general and the foods for which you have pictures specifically. Talk about why these foods are healthy or unhealthy. Show the children each picture and ask, "Is this food healthy?" If it is, put in the smiley face bag. If it is not, put it in the sad face bag. Ask the children to cheer for the healthy foods.

Glitter Germs

• Explain to the children what germs are and tell them that you are going to pretend that glitter is germs. Pour some glitter on your hand and shake hands with one of the children. Have everyone observe how much glitter was transferred to the child's hand. Ask her to shake hands with someone else. Continue having the students shake hands until everyone has glitter on her hands.

  Explain that now everyone has your germs. Have the children wash their hands and tell them that just like washing glitter off your hands, you can wash germs off your hands too.

Body Buddies

• Discuss parts of the body. Divide the class into pairs. If there is an odd number of children, you can be someone's partner or you can have one group of three children. Tell the children that you are going to call out the names of body parts. Each child must touch that body part on his partner. You can call out "Toe to toe," then "Knee to knee," for example.

  Then have one of the pair be Number One and the other partner be Number Two. Call out "Number One's finger to Number Two's elbow." Make up as many crazy combinations as you like.

  You can also call a pair of children to the front of the group and ask them to connect body parts to test their knowledge of their own body parts. Ask the pair to tell the class which body parts they will be touching. For example, they could say, "Fingers to toes." Continue until each pair has had a turn.