The Fabulous Five Senses
Week 1's Focus: Seeing and Hearing
Week 2's Focus: Tasting, Touching, Smelling
This week we talked about some of the ways our bodies help us understand the world around us as young scientists: our Five senses!
Sense of Sight
Sense of Hearing
Sense of Taste
Sense of Touch
Sense of Smell
We discussed that sometimes we use just one sense and sometimes we use all five. For example, when we go on a picnic, we use our sense of taste when we're eating our food; we use our sense of touch to hold our food; we use our sense of smell to smell the tasty food we're eating; we use our sense of hearing to listen to our family or friends eating with us - and the sounds around us in nature; and we use our sense of sight to see what we're eating and where we are going.
We met Sttan - our 5 senses man who helps us remember what the five senses are:
S(ight) T(aste) T(ouch) A(udio or sound) N(ose)
We met Sttan - our 5 senses man who helps us remember what the five senses are:
S(ight) T(aste) T(ouch) A(udio or sound) N(ose)
We discussed that our five senses help keep us safe. If we are crossing the road - always with an adult - we LOOK and LISTEN to see if any cars are coming. If we are going to eat something fresh from the oven, we touch it before we put it in our mouths and if it's too HOT, we wait until it cools. We learned that scientists use their senses to be careful in the world around them AND to make fun, exciting discoveries about the world.
WEEK ONE
Our focus the first week of this two-week lesson is on our Sense of Sight and Sense of Hearing.
First, we did a group activity with mirrors. Every student got a mirror and looked at their eyes. They located the black circle in the middle of their eyes and learned the WORD of the WEEK: PUPIL. It is an opening, actually a tunnel, through which light passes to the back of the eye (to the retina) and allows us to see what is in front of us. As the colored part of the eye (the iris) opens or closes to allow more or less light in, the pupil changes size. We demonstrated this by watching our eyes as we turned the classroom lights on and off - we had to watch closely because it happens very quickly!
Our second group experience was to listen to various sounds we might hear in the world around us and to identify those sounds using our ears. We identified owls, pianos, sneezes, motorcycles, water splashing, frogs, snoring, ducks, and much more. We learned that sounds are vibrations and that if we listen to a noise TOO loudly, it can affect our hearing permanently by knocking-down and damaging little hair-like structures in our ears. The kids were fascinated by this! We understand we can listen to all levels of sounds but it's best not to put any REALLY loud sounds near our ears, and if there is a loud noise by us, we can simply cover our ears.
Our Week One centers focused on sight and sound. We played a Five Senses matches game. We practiced drawing with and without our eyes covered. We used a thaumatrope (simple optical toy) that fooled our eye into believing we caught a frog in a jar! We listened to various mystery sounds and tried to guess what they were. We examined x-rays. We played with various small instruments that make noise. Additionally, there were fall-related centers for the children to continue exploring.
Our youngest scientists sang a song about the 5 senses and listened to the book, The Five Senses, A Lion's Tale. They met STAN, the 5 senses man and we pointed out where our eyes, ears, nose, skin/hands, and mouth are. We listened to fun sounds together and we explored around the classroom using our sense of sight, hearing, and touch. We got to feel objects that were rough, smooth, hard, soft, bumpy, scratchy, and sticky.
Our youngest scientists sang a song about the 5 senses and listened to the book, The Five Senses, A Lion's Tale. They met STAN, the 5 senses man and we pointed out where our eyes, ears, nose, skin/hands, and mouth are. We listened to fun sounds together and we explored around the classroom using our sense of sight, hearing, and touch. We got to feel objects that were rough, smooth, hard, soft, bumpy, scratchy, and sticky.
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