Our Five Senses

I received such a great response from this post, I created a Five Senses Unit using many of the ideas below (plus a few more)! 

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We had a great week learning about our five senses! I started using science journals this year and so far I am loving them! It's such a great way for all my students to be able to participate during our large group time. During our large group time, we drew our five senses in our journals. 

Nose - Smell

We explored smelly jars for our sense of smell. The jars are really simple. You can use film canisters, baby food jars, or empty spice containers. Place a cotton ball in the film canister and then drop a few drops of "scent". I used cinnamon, chicken bullion, peppermint extract, chocolate, perfume, and vanilla.

Eyes - See

We explored the outdoors using our sense of sight. I had my students draw what they could see. We talked about what color the grass is and what color we would use to draw it in our journals, etc.

Ears - Hear

We played a smartboard game to explore our sense of hearing. It was really simple. I just went into Microsoft Powerpoint and used the sounds already in the program. On the first page I put a sound, then on the next page I put a picture of what makes that sound. I added about 10 sounds, which was the perfect amount for the attention span of my kiddos. After I played a sound, the kids tried to guess what makes that sound. 

Skin - Feel

We added different textures to a hand cut out for the sense of touch. I got this great idea from pinterest of course! I was really suprised at how much of a vocabulary lesson this turned out to be. I ended up sending the hands home with a note to parents encouraging them to go over the hand with their child and go on a "hunt" for textures around the house. 

soft - cotton ball (or pom pom as shown here)

smooth - scotch tape

rough - sand paper

hard - uncooked pasta

bumpy - rocks or pebbles (aquarium pebbles shown here)

Tongue -Taste

The last sense is taste. We talked about this sense some last week when we made our friend mix. We will also be talking about it this week when we make pancakes. We didn't get a chance to do a specific activity for this sense, since I was out of the classroom for meetings that day. 

It was a fantastic week. We really got a lot accomplished. I'm really excited to actually begin teaching! The first few weeks are routines & rules, routines & rules, routines & rules, it's nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel! We also focused on our names last week. I'll have to include those activities in a future post. 

Hope your school year is going smoothly.