Science/Arabic - Body Parts

Following the NC for Year 1 Science, the next set of targets we're aiming to cover are found in the section "Animals, Including Humans":

1) Identify and name the basic parts of the human body (head, neck, arms, elbows, legs, knees, face, ears, eyes, hair, mouth, teeth) through games, actions, songs and rhymes.

2) Draw and label the basic parts of the human body.

3) Say which part of the body is associated with each sense.

4) Use their senses to compare different textures, sounds and smells.

As we've already covered the first target naturally over the past few years, I decided I may as well ensure they have the equivalent knowledge in Arabic... Then that extended to why not just complete the whole topic with an Arabic language link? We've already covered most of the basic parts either through Madinah Arabic Reader Book 1 or our local Arabic club, i.e. head, eye/s, ear/s, mouth, nose, face, hand/s, foot/feet, leg/s - and this has been through games, actions, songs and rhymes as suggested.

First, I drew a simple stickman on the whiteboard and labelled the body parts with the new vocabulary, i.e. hair, tongue, neck, shoulder, elbow, knee. We went through each in turn, with the girls attempting to read each word before I told them what it was, and reminded ourselves of the difference between indefinite/definite nouns (I decided to use singular indefinite - with the exception of "teeth" - for all the words, i.e. "a shoulder", so Arabic words ending in un) by practising changing between them. After some quick games of "Follow My Leader" (i.e. copy the action by moving/touching that body part and repeating the word) and "Simon Says..." (i.e. only move/touch that body part if I said it by the correct name, otherwise don't!) - starting in English then building in the Arabic translations - I gave the twins the pictured worksheet to complete:

I decided to make my own worksheet because the ones I found online you had to pay for and/or the words didn't have the vowel sounds on the letters - meaning my girls would struggle to read them anyway. Plus this meant I could customise the labels to my liking. 👌 I made a suitable image from this free doll making website and typed the Arabic labels using this free online Arabic keyboard.

The worksheet activity is a simple cut-out the Arabic words and stick them in the correct place on the diagram. It reinforces labelling skills/conventions, checks understanding of vocab as well as practising reading Arabic text and fine motor scissor skills. You can either give them the second sheet as-is, so with the Arabic already matched to the translation, or just give them the Arabic list. I decided to give mine just the Arabic words to cut out themselves and the English list as a reference sheet. If you prefer, you could do the worksheet activity first and then follow up with the above mentioned quick games to reinforce.

You can download an editable copy of the worksheet here. Feel free to customise it as you like!

Next, we covered the second target by using this worksheet as a template:

Self-explanatory, they needed to fill in the box with the body parts mentioned then label them on their drawings. They had the option of using each other as models, or myself, if they got stuck. 😂 They underlined the words as they labelled them so they wouldn't miss any out - underlining rather than crossing out so they could still read them!

You can download an editable copy of the worksheet here.

Next, we'll move on to introducing the five senses and practising the related Arabic verbs insha'Allah. 😊