Karen's Clan

Today was the last day in the series I've been doing on the body, and we explored our senses. Here are some of the activities we managed to fit in, some great ideas for next time, and lots of fuel to get you going when it comes to wanting to explore this topic with your kids!

Hearing:

• Here's a lovely poem for kids to learn:

The Senses

Five little senses are what I need,

To use when things are near.

I use my eyes to look and see

I use my ears to hear.

I use my nose to smell things

I use my hands to touch.

I use my mouth to taste

The things I love to eat so much.

Five little senses standing in a row

To see, hear, smell, touch and taste

The things I need to know

•  a great song to sing, (to the tune of "Did you ever See a Lassie", nice and simple for musically challenged people like me!). We kept adding in our favorite sounds which included waves crashing (me), a dog barking (Miss K), and a skunk farting (thanks to King Arthur - boys will be boys!)!

• Fill up same sized containers with different things (marbles, gravel, sugar etc) and compare and contrast the sounds you hear.

• Sit still outside somewhere, and see who can count the most sounds in a given time period - we got between 5-7 different sounds in a 20 second period. Amazing what you can hear when you chose to draw aside and be still - think I'll be doing that more often!

• Taryn over at Hayes Happenings made this tongue craft a while back which I loved, so we followed her post step by step! Before we put the items on our biscuits, we put them in the center of our tongues to see if we really could taste anything - and we couldn't - how interesting!

measuring

tasting

shaping

making

before...

after ... (don't use soft centred sweets for the front - they melted!!!!!)

• Blindfold your kids and feed them a variety of foods and see if they can guess what it is without seeing it first!

• Using the blindfold, prepare a number of small bowls of different textures for the kids to feel and enjoy (custard, jelly, cornflour, salt, sugar, ice) without looking. To extend the activity, try to get them to describe what they are feeling  what it feels like to them. Help to prompt them to draw comparisons - it feels like a jelly fish etc..., or thicker than the previous one etc. For kids who can write, ask them to be the scribe for the younger ones and throw in some handwriting too!
• We used a mystery bag today, and one of Belle's old toys. Using only their sense of touch, the children had to choose a shape on the ball first and then feel for the correct one in the bag, without looking! I threw in some other items as well to add some fun.

• We had a blast looking and laughing at these optical illusions!

How many dogs do you see?

His legs...or trunk..?!

Which is longer? Really? Pull out that ruler and measure!

Duck or rabbit?

Which is bigger? Get the kids to cut them out and lay them over one another to see!

• I filled up a few plastic lids with some interesting stuff from the pantry (coffee, cinnamon, curry, vinegar, vanilla and sage), and then used the blindfold again. The first time round, neither Miss K nor King Arthur could identify anything. The second time round, I asked them what food it made them think of - both associated pancakes with the cinnamon aroma although they couldn't identify the spice's name. Then I allowed them to use their eyes and to taste, and they were able to get most of them!

ready to be a sleuth!