What should be stuck to your fridge?
4
Understanding layers
Some children will find conceiving of an animal in three layers very difficult even after you have demonstrated the three layer pig and they have tried to make a three layer pig badge. In the trial schools quite a few children were good at exploding the animal - separating the arms, legs and head from the body but keeping all the items in a single plane as just one layer.
You can help these children by asking them to imagine what they see when they are looking straight at an animal that I looking straight back at them. The first layer they see is the features - the eyes, nose, mouth (and may be whiskers). Behind that is head that these features are part of. Then at the bottom, behind everything else comes the body that the head is attached to.
A good starting point is to draw two concentric circles as shown. Ask the child to add something to the large one that turns it into a body - wings sticking out at the sides, a tail sticking up or legs going down to the ground. Then ask them to add features to the face. In this way you can have conversations with the children about what goes in each layer and help them develop their understanding. If they get stuck you can fill in part of the answer for a layer and get them to finish it off.