Five senses at an end

Firstly apologies for everything being crooked....we are away on a job with my husband so I'm using his laptop late at night when he's home and everything is different!

Over the course of looking at the five senses we have done a few art or craft activities.

We did paper plate faces ( Mummy helped with the glasses)

We 'broomed' crayon cars on sandpaper (both the winkles loved this!)

And we painted pictures of ears with ear buds (I just did this with Lamb as I thought for sure Cherry would have it in her ear!)

So that's a wrap for our five senses....

The sense of sight

For the sense of sight we printed out a set of pictures and a mini set to go with them. I bought Lamb a magnifying glass and he matched the mini pictures with the ones that he could see clearly.

He loved this activity, applied himself with gusto and proceeded to inspect all kinds of things with his magnifying glass in the following days.

 

We also needed to have a discussion about the parts of the eye in an interesting way.

I chose colouring. Lamb is usually pretty against colouring. He loves to draw but just doesn't get into the whole 'within the lines' thing. He was quite interested in this though as we discussed the names of the parts of the eye, what kinds of eyes colours you could get and the corresponding eyebrow colour!

 

This lent itself to a discussion of counting in twos. He pointed out that eyes come in pairs and I went through the hard and soft counting to ten. He seemed to get it but we only did it the once. I'm not sure he's quite there yet....

The sense of hearing

First of all I introduced 'silence'. Maria Montessori writes a lot about the benefits of silence and how her small groups of children really enjoyed tip toeing around avoiding making noise and to a degree my tots are the same. She would write the word 'silence' on the board while I hold my finger to my lips until they have both caught on then I hold up one finger or two depending on whether we are doing one minute or two. It did depend a little bit on the mood to whether Lamb played along or deliberately made as much noise as possible but when he was interested he would ask to do it again and again so that we would tip toe around or eat soup with silly smiles on our faces without making any noise!

Then we practised isolating sounds. One of these activities we added to our 5 senses chart and Lamb isolated the sounds of his breathing and the trickle of the fish tank in another room, the birds outside and things like that. Outside is of course much better.

Then we talked about different kinds of ears and I set up this activity.

I found some pictures of animals and printed out two sets cutting the ears from the second then I arranged them on the paper and Lamb had to match the ears to the correct animal and glue them down. He quite liked talking about the different appearance of the ears especially the lizard ears which are little more than holes in their heads!

The sense of taste

For the sense of taste I made a felt mouth on our little roll up felt mat.

While it might help Lamb learn the basic parts of the mouth and the names of the teeth, I did it more for a counting exercise as he places the teeth. He gets mixed up from 14 through to 18 so I thought a little practice wouldn't go astray.

We also added the next row on our five senses chart.

Lamb was able to read 'hot' and 'cold' and glue the correct pictures into their squares but he needed help deciphering the other words. Once he knew what they said, he knew what picture needed to go where.

The sense of smell

For the sense of smell we had two great books.

This one if relatively basic most of the way through but it does introduce the olfactory bulb and sending messages from senses to the brain. Lamb was a bit weirded out as the olfactory bulb in the picture looks like a slater!

Lamb loved this book and we have had many conversations about allergies since. It probably goes into too much detail regarding synapses for a three and a half year old but you can skip that. It contains images from under a microscope of all of the allergens it discusses.

Both are available at Amazon Books.

We used the second as the basis for what we filled our squares with on our 5 senses chart.

Lamb drew pictures of flowers as the book discusses pollen as an allergen, we did little dots for pepper, he drew a dust mite, I drew a mushroom for mould as it's a fungi while Lamb insisted on attempting to draw the mildew as it appears in the book and we stuck a guinea fowl feather on as the book discusses down in pillows as an allergen.

Our 5 senses chart

As part of our journey through the five senses I decided to make up a chart so that we could document our observations and have it on the wall as a conversation starter whenever Lamb felt the need.

So we glued sandpaper on for 'rough', seaweed that we collected on a trip to the beach for 'slimy' (though it didn't stay that way when it dried of course), some shells for 'smooth', cotton wool for 'soft' and glitter on glue for 'gritty'.

Salt Dough Hands

In theme of our first 'sense', the sense of touch', I decided we should make some hands from salt dough (recipe is at the bottom)

Rolling out the salt dough

Following which Lamb and Cherry held very still while I traced around their hands. We baked them in the oven.

So now we play 'the hand game'..."Can you touch something that is smooth? dry? sticky? starts with 't'"...whatever it might be. Lamb has to think for a while on some of them and Cherry just wombles along following Lamb. Funnily enough without the little hands to use this would be a game I would struggle to get them to play along with!

SALT DOUGH RECIPE

100 grams of plain flour

50 grams of salt

1 teaspoon of cooking oil

80 mls of water

I doubled this and we made some beads at the same time that Lamb ran a toothpick through. We'll paint them up later and use them for threading.

The sense of touch

I decided it would be a great idea to delve a little more deeply into the five senses.

Lamb knows what they are and the body part responsible of course but I thought it might present an opportunity to hone those senses by isolating them and doing activities associated with them.

Cherry is also at the age where she is fascinated to learn and repeat the names of body parts.

Starting with the sense of touch I made up a puzzle of the bones in the hand from cardboard

The labels are obviously quite involved so it becomes a lesson in remembering the names of the bones and then finding the first letter of that word in order to 'label' them. He was quite cross about the word 'phalanges' to start with because of course that starts with 'ph' not 'f'. I explained to him that I would have to teach him the blends and now when he does the puzzle he leaves it until last then states that I still have to teach him the blends.

I also printed up some body part three part cards.

This is the first time I have given Lamb three part cards. I think at present he works out which label goes where based on the first letter again.

I also printed out some digit cards and we've been number ordering and 'adding' with them.