What you will need
- Pills- the clay pills from the making pills adult led activity or we have a printable pill PDF you could use.
- Repeating patterns PDF or make your own.
- The pharmacist poster
Duration
- 10 to 15 minutes
Challenge children to repeat and extend pill patterns.
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
- Mathematics Shape, Space and Measures
- 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
Medicine, pill, tablet, capsule, lozenge, clay, solid, stiff, shape, round, rounder, flatter, sphere, spherical, oval, the same as, repeating, colour, extend, continue, describe, AB pattern, ABAB pattern, ABB pattern, ABBC pattern.
What to do
Tell the children that they are going to be observant like pharmacist by copying and extending a repeating pattern. Provide each child with a pattern appropriate to their level of development. This may be AB, ABAB, ABB, ABBC or another pattern.
On the pattern sheets there is a space underneath for children to copy the pattern and then extend it at the end. You could ask the children to copy the pattern only or to extend the pattern only.
You could ask:
- What colours are the pills in this pattern?
- Are they tablets, capsules or lozenges?
- What shape are they?
- What size are they?
- Are they big/small/long/round/oval/yellow/blue…?
- Can you describe the pattern?
- Which pill comes first?
- Which pill comes next?
- What comes after that?
- Can you continue the pattern?
You could repeat the activity with similar patterns until the children can copy and complete them with confidence.
Other things to try
You could challenge the children to complete a more complex pattern or you could ask them to be creative like pharmacists and make up their own pill patterns.
You could ask:
- Can you describe your pattern to me?
- How many different pills have you used in your pattern?
- How do you know it is repeating?
- When does it start to repeat?
- Can you spot any pills that are in the wrong place?
- Can I continue your pattern? Have I done it correctly? How do you know?
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 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 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.
