My Five Senses

Grade Levels: Toddler-Early Elementary Education
Subject(s): Science, Music, & Reading

Pop Into The Senses
Activities:
1. Popping Popcorn
Have your children feel and look at unpopped kernals.
Pop the popcorn - Have your children watch, smell and listen as you pop the popcorn.
As your children watch the popcorn being popped, sing the song "Popcorn Popping" found on page 242 of the LDS Children's Songbook.
Talk about how popcorn looks like blossums on blooming apricot trees.
Give a cupful of warm popcorn to your children to feel and taste.
2. Pictures
Show your children pictures cut from magazines of people who are using their senses to explore objects.
Ask your children to tell you what is happening in each picture.  (Seeing, Tasting, Smelling and Touching.)
Explain that these are our five senses which we use to explore and learn about our world.
Ask your children to name and point to the parts of their body that help them do each of these things.

Hearing
Activities:
1. Inside Sounds
Have your children listen to different sounds that are in your home.
Ask them: "What kinds of sounds did you hear?"
2. Outside Sounds:
Have your children listen to things around them.
Have them tell you what is making a particular sound.

Smell / Taste
Activities:

1. Read a Book
Read Bambi's Fragrant Forest or another book about senses to your children.
2. Food Smelling & Tasting
Gather some food that your children would like.  For example, lemon juice, sugar, salt, fruit, vegetables, etc.
Have  your children taste the different foods.

Touch
Activities:
1.  Feeling Objects and Guessing What It Is
Bring in the different objects and place under a table or blindfold them. Some objects that you can use are: sand, jello, rocks, bird's feathers, leaf, shells, blocks, rubber bands, macaroni, grass, unsharpened pencil, etc.
Have children sit around a table with a sheet hanging over the sides and the objects on the floor in a row.
Each child will feel the object in front of them and guess what it is when it is their turn.  For younger children, just have them feel what it is, ask them what they think it is, and then tell them if they do not know what it is.

Fun Reading Activity

Activities
1. Read some books from Senses Theme or any other book.
2. Decorate Cookies
Make sugar cookies located at Sugar Cookies or Dairy-free Sugar Cookies or buy cookies and have your children decorate them how they desire.
3. Read Another Book
Read another book or two to your children as they eat their cookies.