One aspect of skin that all preschoolers can be attuned to is the feeling of touching an object. Teach your students that touch is just one sense among the other four. Explain to them that when we touch something, the nerves in our skin send a message to our brain which produces the sensation of feeling. Reinforce this lesson by bringing a variety of objects of different textures into class. Have students close their eyes, pass the objects around and guess what they are.
Another aspect of skin education that students should learn at a young age relates to the risk of sun exposure. Ask your students if any of them have ever had a sunburn. If so, ask them to explain to the class what it felt like. Explain to your students that the sun harms our skin if we're exposed to it for too long. Ask students for suggestions of how to avoid a sunburn, such as sunscreen, a hat, sunglasses and playing indoors. Have students draw a picture of playing outside safely.
Preschoolers might be excited to learn that human beings are not the only life forms that have skin. Ask your students to name other animals or objects that contain skin. They might name different animals, fruits, vegetables and grains or nuts. Bring in a variety of different skins into the classroom, such as an orange peel, a banana peel and the skin from a nut. Give students magnifying glasses and let them examine the different skins, as well as their own.
Students should learn from a young age that beauty is only skin-deep. Explain to your class that everybody in the world has a different skin color from one another. Even two people of the same race have slightly different skin color. Tell them that no matter what we look like at skin level, we are all people and equally worthy. Have your preschoolers draw a picture of people of different skin colors getting along.