Ask most parents what their toddler's early words were, and body parts come up constantly — nose, ear, belly, toes — often before far more "useful" words. There's a simple reason body-part words tend to come early and stick: nothing else gets pointed at, touched, and named quite as often.
Why body parts have an unfair advantage
Vocabulary builds fastest around words that get repeated in real, physical context — not words that get repeated the most in isolation, like on a flashcard. A toddler's own body goes everywhere with them, gets touched constantly during dressing, bathing, and play, and is available for naming dozens of times a day without anyone setting up a special activity. That density of real, embodied repetition is exactly what makes a word stick.
A simple routine that works better than drilling
Instead of formal "teaching time," the highest-leverage moment is already built into your day: naming body parts out loud during things you're doing anyway. "Let's wash your hands." "Time to brush your hair." "Where are your socks going — on your feet!" The repetition comes from routine, not from flashcards, which is exactly why it works.
A useful next step once pointing starts working
Once a toddler reliably points to a named body part on themselves, the next real test — not the next drill — is whether they can find it somewhere else: on a doll, on you, in a picture. That transfer is what shows the word is genuinely understood, rather than memorized for one specific context.
First Words for How Things Work: My Body is built around exactly that progression — real photographed body parts, in the kind of varied context that helps a toddler's understanding actually transfer beyond the page.