Ourselves in the Curriculum

Children are aware of their body parts even before they join school and have begun to use their body parts quite successfully to accomplish many tasks. But, it cannot be said with certainty that children have an adequate understanding of the roles and purposes of their body parts. Nor have they explored their body parts sufficiently to understand their uses and limitations.

Creating opportunities for children to explore their body parts and to understand their roles and functions is the primary objective of studying the human body in the primary classes.

Primary school provides the first opportunity for students to begin a systematic study of themselves and their environment. It is here that they begin to see relationships based on observations. Drawing inferences from observations or developing skills to process information is also a requirement of the curriculum.

Students can easily explore the parts of their body in order to come to conclusions about their uses, realise their limitations and how these parts, in association with the rest, help in the smooth functioning of the body.

Caring for ourselves and developing healthy habits are essential.

Having realised the importance of the different parts of the body, the next logical step would be to take good care of them. Developing such habits in children is an important component of primary education.

Sensitising children to the needs of people with disabilities is an essential part of the curriculum.

Children would sooner or later encounter people with disabilities, sometimes with visual or hearing disabilities too and deal with them. Understanding how their body functions, will help them understand the difficulties disabled people have in coping with the world. For children with such disabilities, it will help them learn ways to overcome or compensate for this disability.

Early identification of defects and disabilities and advising proper remedial action is essential. The teacher is in a very good position to undertake such observations during the exploration of the human body by children.

Exploration of the sense organs provide a unique opportunity to detect early any defects or limitations children have in seeing or hearing. As these organs have a vital role to play in learning, early attention to disabilities will ensure that children’s learning and development are not affected.