Preschool Activities: Hair and Why it's There

As part of the Creative Preschooler team, we explored our hair. Hair is really kind of weird if you think about it. It comes in all different colors and textures, grows out of our skin, falls out, and grows back (unless you are like my husband and experiencing a loss of hair 🙂 hehe. My daughter and I both have lots of long hair sitting on top of our head, so it was fun putting down the hairbrush, curlers, and bows, and playing with hair during “school time” in an educational way.

Part of the activities from today’s activity came from the About Me science book for 4-6 year olds. Read our full review at the bottom of this post and make sure to check out the rest of the Creative Preschooler’s posts with great activities to learn about our bodies. You should also check out our B is for Body Activity that we enjoyed.

Hair: Key Points We Talked About

Hair comes in lots of colors and textures
Hair grows all over our body and can help keep us warm or protect us from germs
Hair has a root and a shaft
Hair grows, falls out, and grows again
We don’t cut our own hair (Just thought I needed to mention it just in case someone decided to watch their hair grow back)

Eyes & Eyelashes

Supplies:

2 Empty tissue boxes

2 Pipe cleaners

Scissors

Tape

Craft paper

Small pieces of tissue paper

Directions:

1. To Prep the Activity: Remove the plastic liner from the top of the tissue boxes. Use a small piece of paper to trace the top of the tissue box to make a template.

2. Place the tissue boxes next to each other so the openings are longest horizontally. Place one piece of paper on top of the two boxes and use your template to trace 2 eyes, then cut them out.

3. Draw a face on the paper and tape it to the top of the boxes.

3. Fold then cut the two pipe cleaners into thirds. Bend the pieces slightly so they curve like eyelashes.

4. Tape the eyelashes to the inside of one of the boxes so they stick out over one of the eyes.

5. To Do the Activity: Explain that the tissue paper represents germs, and that eyelashes are small hairs that help protect our eyes. Have child hold their hand above the middle of both boxes and sprinkle the tissue paper so that it gently falls on top of them (Our hand was about a foot away from the boxes). They should notice that more tissue paper lands inside the box without the eyelashes and that the eyelashes help trap some of the tissue paper. Note: You may need to adjust your eyelashes, and make sure the tissue paper is sprinkled, not thrown or dropped. The first thing Ms. Tiger did was drop a handful of tissue paper inside the box missing the point of the activity.

Make a Rainbow Hair Wig

(Adapted from the About Me Book Lesson 5)

Supplies:
Tape
Plastic grocery bag
Crepe paper streamers

To make the wig, you have to place the plastic bag on your child’s head. Please make sure your child knows that plastic bags can be dangerous. This part of the activity made me nervous because I always tell my kids not to put bags on their head for fear of suffocation. Ms. Tiger understood that it was only okay because mom was doing it, and the book directed us, so I decided it was okay to proceed with the activity.

Directions:
1. Put the plastic bag on the top of your child’s head along their hairline. Don’t cover their eyes or face.

2. Roll the bag by the base of the neck so it becomes tight around their head and secure it by tying a knot or using tape. The book says to use the handles of the bag to tie a know at the base of the neck, but our bag handles weren’t long enough.

3. Tuck in any lose ends and tape a long strip around the edge of the cap.

The book says to apply strips of clear tape across the entire cap, then to apply another layer of 2-side tape across the top. I skipped these steps because I didn’t want to use so much tape.

4. Cut strips of crepe paper (we used 50 strips) to desired length and tape them to the plastic cap. To hide the tape on the very top of the wig I folded the crepe paper in half, then taped the underside of the streamer onto the top of the wig.

Crazy Hair Activity

(From the About Me Book Lesson 5)

We got crafty and created some hairstyles of our own using the bald little faces and supply list from the About Me science book.

More Body Activities from the Creative Preschool Team:

Skeleton and X-ray Crafts

Roll to Draw a Body Game

Preschool Activities: Hair and Why it’s There

Let’s learn about our brain!

Preschool Music Video: Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

About Me Book Review

(Disclosure: We received this book for free to be able to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way).

About Me is full of hands-on science activities and creative ideas that are intended for children ages 4-6. It’s nice to be able to turn to the book for inspiration and have readymade materials like stickers, worksheets, and charts (so no printing required). Ms. Tiger likes to look at the book and select activities for us to do. Most of the activities use things you should have on hand, so it works great for our go-with-the-flow kind of day planning. I think Ms. Tiger’s only complaint about the book was that some of the pictures looked weird (like all the boyish looking faces for our hair activity). Also, some of the worksheets seemed a bit small (she struggled getting really creative with her hair decorating because the space allotted wasn’t very big). We loved the Hair Wig craft and the pizza making activity we did from Lesson 12 (Our only note this activity is we found our stickers for the activity on page 46, instead of page 44 as directed).

Overall, the book covers a nice variety of topics like emotions, senses, nutrition, health, and human anatomy. I think you would like this book if you need science activities about our bodies to do with kids, and don’t want to spend the time searching for activities online or printing and creating hands on materials because they come with the book. You can find more information and see more page examples here: Our Time To Learn