What you will need
- Clay, playdough or plasticine
- Tray for drying tablets – if using clay
- Paint and paint brushes – if using clay
- Tablets sheet (simple)
- Tablets sheet (more advanced)
- Pharmacist poster
Duration
- 10 – 15 minutes plus drying time and time for painting
Create different shaped and sized pills for your pharmacy.
Important safety notes:
Before starting this activity, please make sure that the children in your setting understand:
- If they find medicines in the form of liquids, tablets, inhalers, creams, drops, patches or syringes, they should not touch or taste them. They should immediately tell or show an adult.
- They should only take medicines that are given to them by their parent, carer or the practitioner at their EYFS setting.
- They should never take medicines that a doctor has prescribed for somebody else.
Early Learning Goal links
- Understanding the World ELG: Past and Present
- Understanding the World ELG: People, Culture and Communities
- Understanding the World ELG: The Natural World
- Expressive Arts and Design ELG: Creating with Materials
Characteristics of effective learning
Our EYFS units provide enabling environments with teaching and support from adults. Reflecting on the characteristics of effective teaching and learning, children will have opportunity to learn and develop by:
• playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
• active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
• creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things
Taken from Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.
© Crown copyright 2023 licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0.
STEM vocabulary to introduce
Mixture, medicine, pill, tablet, capsule, lozenge, clay, solid, stiff, sticky, wet, slimy, slippy, muddy, shape, round, rounder, flatter, sphere, spherical, oval, pinch, roll, nearly, close to, about the same as, too much, too little, enough, not enough, more than, less than, the same as, equals, dry, colour
Before you start
Show the children the pharmacist poster and tell the children that they are going to be pharmacists for this activity.
Ask the children if they know what a pharmacist does.
Pharmacists dispense medicines. This means they prepare and give medicines to people who have a prescription (or their adult if they are a child). Pharmacists can work in a pharmacy, hospital or GP practice. They can also give advice about prescriptions, how to use and store medicines, and the dangers of medicines. Some pharmacists also make and test new medicines.
Pharmacists are:
Creative when they make new medicines and when they prepare and make special medicines for patients.
Curious about what is wrong with their patients when they are unwell and about which medicines will be best to make them better.
Observant they need to read prescriptions carefully and make sure they give the correct amount of each medicine to their patients.
Tell the children that they are going to need to be creative to make pills and observant to make pills that match the shape or size of the pills on the instructions.
You could use any photographs of pills for this activity, or ask the children to use their imagination. We have produced a simple pills sheet and a more advanced pills sheet that you could print out and use with the children in your setting.
You will need a golf ball sized amount of clay, playdough or plasticine for each child.
What to do – step 1
Model how to choose which pill you are going to make and how to select the correct amount of clay by measuring it next to the picture. Model how to get a bit more clay if you haven’t got enough and how to get rid of some if you have too much.
Step 2
Show the children how to roll the clay into a sphere shape. You could ask:
- Can you make a pill that matches the shape or size of the picture?
- Do you have enough clay?
- Do you have too much?
- Can you roll your clay?
- Have you made a 3D shape?
- Do you have a sphere shape?
Step 3
Ask the children to look carefully at the shape of the pill on the photograph. Model how to make a flatter, round pill by squashing the clay sphere between your finger and thumb and how to make the capsule shape by rolling the ball on the table with one finger to make a sausage-like shape.
You could ask:
- What shape is your pill?
- It it a tablet (rounder shape) or capsule (longer shape)?
- Is your pill the right shape?
- Do you need to make it flatter?
- Do you need to make it longer?
- Are there any other features or details you could add? What will you use to do that?
Step 3
Encourage the children to compare their pills to the photograph. You could ask:
- Is your pill the same shape and size as the photograph?
- What is the same?
- What is different?
Ask them to leave the pill on top of the picture and choose another pill to make. When the children have finished, put the clay pills on a tray to dry or roll up the plasterine/play dough for the next children to use.
Step 4
When the clay pills are dried, encourage the children to paint them the same colours as the ones in your photographs. You could ask:
- Which picture does this pill match with?
- Which colour will you need to paint it?
Ask the children to put the pills to dry and repeat the painting with more tablets. When they are dry, you can use these in your pharmacy role play.
Other things to try- play dough provocation
You could leave the instruction sheets in your play dough area for children to access independently. You could make subitising cards or use our subitising pills print out with the amount of each pill you want the children to make.
Remember to refer to the children as pharmacists and praise them for using the attributes. You could say things like:
“You have been creative like an pharmacist because you created the pills for your patients.”
“You have been observant like a pharmacist and made sure your pills looked the same as the ones in the photographs.”
The science of pills
We have put together some useful information about the science of pills to accompany this activity. Don’t worry, this is for your information only and to help you answer any questions children may have. We don’t expect you to explain this to the children in your setting!
What is a medicine?
Medicines are products that contain active ingredients. An active ingredient is a chemical compound that can be used to cure, halt or prevent disease; ease symptoms; or help in the diagnosis of illness. Active ingredients may be based on molecules extracted from plants, made by a chemical reaction in a laboratory, or be the byproduct of organisms such as fungi.
Medicines may be in the form of liquids, tablets, capsules, inhalers, creams, drops and patches.
Medicines act in a variety of ways.
Antibiotics can cure an illness by killing or halting the spread of invading bacteria.
Some medicines can control problems such as high blood pressure.
Medicines like insulin can replace missing substances or corrects low levels of natural body chemicals.
Analgesics are medicines which block the pathways that transmit pain signals from the injured or irritated body part to the brain, relieving pain.
Vaccines can protect the body against some infectious diseases. They teach your body to make the correct antibodies to fight against the disease if you catch it.
What are the names of different types of pills?
A tablet is a hard and compressed medication in a round, oval, or square shape. The active ingredient is combined other substances to make the tablet sturdy enough to be packaged and transported. Some tablets have a coating to protect against stomach acids and delay the release of the drug into the blood stream. These tablets should not be crushed or chewed. Some tablets are soluble and are designed to be dissolved in water. The active ingredient in the tablets are eventually absorbed into your bloodstream and travel around your body.
In a capsule the active ingredient is contained inside a plastic shell that dissolves slowly in the stomach. Some capsules need to be swallowed whole but others can be split open and the contents mixed with food or liquid. Capsules with a hard shell have two halves which fit inside each other to form a closed casing. They can be filled with dry or liquid ingredients, and can contain more than one active ingredient. Some capsules have a soft-gel coating, and may be semi-transparent. They contain medication suspended in gelatin (or similar substance) that is easily digested so the active ingredients are released and absorbed quickly.
Lozenges are solid pills which are designed to dissolve slowly in the mouth. They are often flavoured and sweetened so they taste nice. They release their active ingredients slowly. Lozenges may contain anaesthetics, antiseptics or something to soothe the throat (a demulcent). They are generally used to treat mouth or throat illnesses.
Pastilles are designed to dissolve slowly in the mouth like lozenges but are usually softer.
Suppositories are used to deliver drugs to the body when other routes cannot be used. Their active ingredient is mixed with another substance, pressed into a bullet, round, oval or cone shape, then coated with a substance such as gelatin. Suppositories are usually inserted into the rectum, and once in the body dissolves to release medication to treat the local area or travel to other parts of the body via the bloodstream.
Why are pills used more often than liquid medicines?
Pills are the most common form of medication because they are small, convenient and easy for a patient to take. Pills are often simple to manufacture, have low production costs and are easily transported and stored.
Pills can be designed to contain multiple drugs, or have different doses of the same drug in layers. This reduced the number of pills that a patient needs to take.
