This past week, my 3 and 5 year olds studied about the five senses using The Magic Schoolbus Explores the Senses. You can find part 1 with our activities on touch and smell here.
Hearing: Guess the Sound Game
We had a LOT of fun with this simple game! Aidan (age 9) collected things that made sounds, and the other boys guessed what they were.
The island in our kitchen made a good barrier so that the younger boys couldn’t peek at the sounds. (Please excuse my cluttery kitchen!)
Here are the sounds we used:
- Tearing paper
- Pouring water from one cup to another
- Sharpening a pencil
- Keys jingling
- A pull-back toy car
- A hair dryer
- Fisher-Price Trio toys snapping together
- Blowing across a glass bottle
- Flipping through the pages of a book
- Turning a flashlight on and off (clicking button)
Some other ideas:
- Blowing up a balloon
- Phone ringing
- Popping bubble wrap
- Cutting with scissors
Taste: Try something new
We went to the grocery store and the boys picked out a new fruit to try. We enjoyed looking at all the produce and smelling it and choosing something that the boys had never tasted before. The chose kiwi fruit – not all that exotic, but we do not usually buy them because of price.
Gresham and Owen both happily tried the kiwi fruit even though they don’t normally like to try new things. Now they want to know if I’ll buy them again. We’ll have to watch for a sale – they were 50 cents each for a tiny fruit, so not very economical for a large-ish family!
Sight: Watch your pupils expand and contract
We learned about how our eyes take in light by standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom. I asked the boys to examine their pupils (the black part of the eye), and then we turned off the light and stood in the dark for several seconds. When I turned the light back on, they examined their eyes again right away and were impressed by how much bigger the pupils were!
Sight: Try an activity blindfolded
For some reason, Owen is terrified of being blindfolded, so we didn’t get to do this. If your children are okay with a blindfold, I think it could be fun to see how much we rely on sight!
Some ideas of things to do blindfolded:
- Try building with Legos
- Try writing your name
- Put on and tie shoes
- Find your way across the house
- Make your bed
We had a lot of fun learning about our five senses! What suggestions do you have for more activities with the senses?
1 Comments
Kryste Aug 11, 2013
Thank you for this! I just started homeschooling my 1st grade son this year, and also have a 3-year-old daughter. We finished learning about the senses last week and were going to move on when someone gave us the Magic School Bus senses book. I then set off to find more "fun" things to do with the senses, and someone had "pinned" this. It was such a blessing to find it! This is what we'll be doing next week. :D
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