The Relation between Children's Wears and their Health : teaching on suitable clothings during swimming lessons

Teaching was carried out on the topic of suitable clothes for a swimming lesson in a primary school domestic science class. The purpose of this attempt was to delve into ways to organize suitable teaching materials for the pupils and to explore an appropriate teaching method on this subject with a view to establishing coherence in method of teaching and appropriateness in timing ranging from a primary to a high school in response to recent demands on instruction on clothing in the whole area of domestic science as a school subject. The subjects involved in this project consisted of 40 primary school pupils (all sixth graders) and 262 university students who were taking a course in the methodology of teaching domestic science at primary school leve1. The following results were obtained : 1. The terms commonly used by a teacher of domestic science such as thermal sensation and skin temperature sounded unfamiliar to the pupils. 2. The materials were made more accessible to the primary school pupils by incorporating a simple experiment which involved their five senses. 3. The pupils were able to recognize an important role played by their clothes in preserving body temperature, through learning this unit, which was preceded by one on environmental climate and clothing that was given one year before. 4. The teaching was given high evaluation by the university students who studied the materials in question in a seminar on teaching methodology in primary school domestic science with unanimous comments that they recognized the importance of this approach. They showed a highly motivated attitude toward teaching this topic in future