Our Five Senses

One of my favorite things to teach is my Five Senses unit. I'm not really sure why it's my favorite, it just is. Here is a rundown of things we did:

Books

Look, Listen, Taste, Touch, and Smell  by Pamela Hill Nettleton
This is actually part of a series called "The Amazing Body" which also has a book for each sense (which, unfortunately are OOP but they are at my local library so maybe you can find them there!). I love the illustrations and the simplicity of its explanation.
Sniff Sniff: A Book About Smell by Dana Meachen Rau
Look: A Book About Sight by Dana Meachen Rau
Yum: A Book About Taste by Dana Meachen Rau
Shhh...: I Book About Hearing by Dana Meachen Rau
Soft and Smooth, Rough and Bumpy by Dana Meachen Rau



My Five Senses by Aliki

Aliki has some great books for the preschool crowd. I love the illustrations in this book too. It's a simple read that provides a great introduction and overview to what the senses are.






Science
Five senses just lend themselves to some great science activities. The kids can really start exploring their world and learning how to express and describe their surroundings.

Taste Test
I had parents bring in a package of Oreos and Chips Ahoy and their generic counterparts. I cut the cookies in half and we had a blind taste test. We also graphed our results. I love how even preschoolers know that there is no suitable stand-in for Oreo. Click here for our graph chart.

Salt or Sugar?

I put salt in one container (in this case a baggie) and sugar in another and we used our senses to see if we could figure out which is which. I don't remember where I found the idea, but I found the idea for a chart here. You can download my chart here.

Sensory Balloons
I filled about 8 pairs of balloons filled with different things -- macaroni noodles, beans, flour, rice, etc. -- and let the kids feel them and try to match them up. They Used a lot of words like rough (salt) and bumpy (beans) and soft (flour). It also gives them a chance to use their critical thinking skills to match them up together.

Art
Touch and Feel City
We sorted cotton balls, craft foam, sand paper, and felt in to buildings based on how they felt. They got great fine motor practice picking the items up and they got to practice using their glue bottles.

Smelly Paint

I mixed flavor extracts/Essential Oils into paint (peppermint for red, cherry for pink, and orange for orange) and they got to paint with it. This is tricky because the extracts are oily and I found that there was a line I was treading between having enough extract to overpower the paint smell and not having so much that it ended up all runny. (In the past I've used Kool-Aid for this activity but found it bubbled up a lot. I like using the extracts/EOs.)

I Have Five Senses

This is an alteration of this Pinspiration. They used large googly eyes, a peppermint candy, Twizzler's Pull n Peel, jingle bells, and sand paper to show each sense. I also had them add hair this year. Super cute!!

So that's what we did this week. Next up: Creepy Crawlies!!