Five Senses Week was SENSE-ational! Each day of the week, the students practiced using a different sense in some really creative and very fun ways!
On Monday, the teachers introduced all of the five traditional senses. They explained that by using these senses, we learn and understand everything around us. For their morning work, the students were asked to identify the correct body part associated with each sense – i.e. “I HEAR with my EAR!”
There were some funny answers like I SMELL with my TONGUE; however, seeing that none of the students at Park Prep are snakes, we figured that this was incorrect. Below is an example of the morning work from Monday.
Later in the afternoon, the students practiced using their sense of hearing while listening to different musical instruments. The game was called, “Guess that Sound” and the objective was for the students to correctly identify which instrument was being played. With the computer turned around and the volume cranked up, the teachers played several short music clips for the students – including violin, harmonica, flute, drums, saxophone, trumpet, piano, and guitar. The students had a blast trying to pinpoint the sound and dancing to the tunes! Be sure to view the video below to see one of the clips that the students listened to and then watched while playing “Guess that Sound!”
On Tuesday, the sense of smell was the focus. Seeing how much the students enjoyed playing “Guess that Sound”, the teachers created “Guess that Smell!” With assorted items in little cups with lids, the teachers called the students over in pairs. The students were shown a picture sheet of different items that might be the smelly mystery item in the cup.
For the most part, the students enjoyed smelling all of the items- except for coffee! They were all in agreement that coffee beans smelled quite “yucky!” Below is the picture of two students attempting to “Guess that Smell”.
Later in the afternoon, the students created a list of things that smell good and things that smell yucky! As you can probably imagine, the yucky list became pretty silly! Here is what the students came up with.
Wednesday was all about the sense of touch. The teachers explained that people use their hands to touch objects and learn about them based on they way they feel. To help build the students’ descriptive word vocabulary, the teachers placed different textured objects in paper bags. The students had to reach a hand in – without peeking – and describe what the item felt like – i.e. smooth, bumpy, hard, soft, etc.
After describing the item, the students were then able to venture a guess as to what the item was. Most of the guesses were on the right track while others were a bit far fetched. For instance, cotton stuffing was mistaken for a cloud and another student, clearly confused, kept saying, “It feels like a hand!”
In the afternoon, the students worked together to classify certain items into the appropriate texture category. The categories included: soft, hard, bumpy, and smooth. Below is a picture of the “soft” category.
Thursday’s sense of focus was sight. For their morning work, the students had to assemble various color shapes according to a specific set of directions containing the positional phrases, such as: at the top, in the middle, on the bottom, on top of, near, and away from. This spatial reasoning activity not only involved the students using their eyes but their listening ears too!
In the afternoon, the students played a large game of “I SPY!” The students scoured the room looking for items of a certain description. They even got to present their item to the rest of their classmates. Below is one student finding “something GREEN with PINK hair”.
The teachers saved the most fun sense for last – TASTE! On Friday, the students tasted sweet grapes, salty pretzels, sour lemonade, and fruity fruit snacks. Some of the words the students used as taste descriptors were actually more like texture descriptors, i.e. “Fruit snacks taste squishy”. The teachers explained the difference between fruity taste and squishy texture but it actually proved an important point that all of our senses are meant to work together! Needless to say, the tasting was very enjoyable for the students.
In the afternoon, the students brainstormed a list of things that were sweet, fruity, sour, and salty. Below is a photograph of what the students came up with.
The students had such a great time learning about the five senses and how they all work together to help us learn. Be sure to check back next week to see what else we learned about at Park Prep during Fall/Autumn week.
-PPA