Teach children how to identify body parts in a foreign language with motivating vocabulary games, stories, and projects.

When it comes to learning languages, kids are naturals. Whether you are teaching in a classroom, or introducing the children in your own home to French, German or Spanish, body parts vocabulary is both fun and fundamental. The following activities allow kids to experience language through movement and play.

Simon Says

Find out how to say "Simon Says" in the target language and have fun with this listening comprehension activity. Tell students to touch, wiggle, raise, or tap various body parts . . . but only if Simon says. After sufficient teacher modeling, kids can be Simon, too.

Skeletons

Large cardboard and inflatable skeletons used as Halloween decorations are perfect for teaching body parts any time of the year. Hang the skeleton and give students post-it notes labeled with body parts vocabulary. The kids put their post-it notes on the corresponding part of the skeleton. They can also have fun making up a name and personality for the skeleton.

Memory Chants

Clap your hands and create a rhythm for this memory add-on game. Begin by pointing to three body parts and identifying them in the target language. The class repeats the vocabulary and a volunteer adds on another body part. Start again from the beginning, identifying the four body parts in the same order, then choose a child to suggest a fifth body part. Continue adding on one body part at a time until the kids can name ten without missing a beat.

Head to Head

Kids stand in pairs, facing each other. Clap or snap your fingers to create a rhythm. Name a set of body parts and the students will repeat them three times in rhythm while touching those body parts together. For example, while repeating "Head to Head", kids will put their heads together, while repeating "Foot to Foot", they will put their feet together, etc. You can mix up the body parts, too: head to shoulder, finger to back, foot to knee. This game is sure to generate some giggles.

Twister

This classic board game is a silly, active way to practice the words for hand, foot, right, left, as well as the colors.

Bingo

Students create their own bingo cards by copying vocabulary words or pictures in each square. Call out body parts as the children cover the words on their card, anticipating five in a row . . . Bingo!

Tic Tac Toe

Create tic-tac-toe grids with pictures of body parts in each space. Students must identify the body part before placing an X or an O in that space.

Life-Sized Tourists

In small groups, students choose one child to lie down on a large piece of butcher paper as the others trace the outline of the body. This outline will be transformed into a colorful tourist, complete with souvenir tee-shirts and other authentic items from the culture. The kids must label the body parts in the target language.

Word Portrait Poems

Kids will get creative by making self-portraits out of words. The parts of the face are made up of body parts vocabulary words copied into the corresponding shape. For example, the mouth would be the words mouthmouthmouth turned up into a smile.

Go Away Big Green Monster

Ed Emberley's classic picture book, Go Away, Big Green Monster! (Little, Brown Kids, 1993) provides an entertaining context for using body parts vocabulary. Translate this story into your target language and teach your kids to shout, "Go away!" to that monster, body part by body part.

Student-Created Monsters

As a follow-up to Ed Emberley's book, students can draw, color, and write about their own monsters with one orange eye, six green arms . . . anything they can imagine.

Kids will have so much fun taking part in these motivating foreign language body parts games, they won't even realize they are learning.