A couple of weeks ago I put out a query about how to
present birth and bf to first graders. Several people
offered wonderful suggestions and a few people asked
me to pass on what I did. I just did the presentation
in 2 classrooms. Here's how it went:

Teachers were a bit skiddish about my doing a talk
about birth and breastfeeding per se. When one
discusses how babies come out, inevitably the
questions arises about how the baby got in, and
teachers didn't want to get into that in their
1st grade classrooms in a 30 minute presentation.
Fair enough.

I broadened out the presentation to talk about
mammels in general. I asked the kids if they remembered
being born, what makes mammels unique (fur/skin, warm
blooded, live birth, moms make milk etc. etc.)
Then I read a couple of chapters from Dia Michel's
wonderful book "If My Mom Were a Platypus". I let
the kids choose the animals, based on their interests
and things they'd been studying during the year.
The book is packed with great info about birth, nursing,
and other habits of about a dozen different animals,
including humans. I read three animal chapters with
commentary and questions, then the human chapter.

I wanted to wrap up with a game or activity of some sort.
My daughter found in one of her biology books a wonderful
chart of about 10 animals and different stages of fetal growth.
Many high school biology books have some version of this table,
and I imagine there are numerous versions available on the
web as well, under animal embroyology or other such key words.
I took 5 of those animals matching game. The game board had
the first fetal picture across the top and the animal on the
bottom. I cut out the other images and mixed them up. The kids
had to match up which fetal pictures go with which animal.
It's harder than you think. When I tried to do it at home, I
couldn't, so I gave the kids "answer sheets" to look
at when they were finished. '

The presentation was about 1/2 and hour and they worked on the
game for about 10 minutes. It worked quite well and introduced
birth and bfing in a fun and natural way.

Naomi Bar-Yam

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