Enter your e-mail address to receive updates! Class Exercise for Preschoolers to Raise Body Awareness (This exercise should take no more that 15-20 minutes in order to keep their attention.) Work with small groups of 4 or 5 children at a time. Give each child their own copy of the child silhouette drawings. You can have some fun with the exercise by backing the drawings on construction paper of pink and blue. Give the girls the blue backed silhouettes and the boys the pink backed silhouettes. See if they notice the opposite gender colors and if they attach a negative connotation. You can ask what "pink for boys" and "blue for girls" means to them. Point out to them that they are looking at a series of body sizes and shapes of children. Be careful that you don't use the words fat or thin or other similar language. It is important that you don't convey either a positive or negative impression of the child figures, because you want to determine how aware they are of body size and shape at this point in the exercise. Ask the children questions about the figures they are looking at to determine if they have already formed cultural stereotypes about fatness and thinness. Sample questions which could be asked are as follows: 1. Which one of these figures do you look like? 2. Which one of these figures would you like to look like? 3. Which one would you like to play with? 4. Which one looks smart/dumb? 5. Which one would the teacher like/dislike? Be creative with your questions to ascertain how these children view their bodies and the bodies of their peers. Following the question/answer exercise, engage the children in a brief sharing time about the fact that people come in all shapes and sizes, i.e. what someone looks like on the outside should not influence our attitude about them. Looking at the thin person and thinking they are "smart", or the fat person and thinking they are "lazy", are not factual conclusions. Our goal is to shape the attitudes of young people when they-are most impressionable, and thereby help to create healthy body images and thus healthy self-concepts. It is important to share this message with parents. Send helpful information home with the children such as the "Prevention" flyer or the newspaper article "If Parents Are Sensible About Food." Copyright 1993 Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention Inc. All rights reserved

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