Learning about the senses

Sep 21 2006

Published by Anne-Marie at 4:17 am under Activities, Books

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Rebecca blogs at An Irish Craftworkers Good Life about her craft business and making things like:

hand painted pillow cases
felt birds
felted bowls (doesn’t the green one look like an inverse head of lettuce?)
felt fish

Otherwise, she’s a stay-at-home mom to Aoife and Muireann. (Her husband also has a craft business and makes these gorgeous hobby horses.)

Being a creative person and coming from a family of artists, she came up with a marvelous way to teach her daughters about their world. The first step was the Tasting Game:

Taste
Choose several food items (you know your own children’s limits & allergies) from the fridge and cupboards. Spoon a small amount of each onto individual dishes (or pot lids). Aoife, aged 4, chose to be blindfolded, while Nana guided her finger to one of the samples for tasting. Muireann also wanted to play, but being a bit younger, opted to keep her eyes open. I played too, and without seeing the colour, it can actually be quite tricky to guess the flavour.

The children loved this game. Its quite exciting and can be very funny. One tip though, leave the chocolate spread sample until last otherwise the game is in danger of being discarded for repeated tastings of the same sample!!!

Possible samples : Try and cover a couple of different flavour experiences which include plenty of sweet (honey, syrup, raison, yogurt, chocolate spread), perhaps a mild sour (diluted lemon) and salt (only one grain, or a ready salted crip). Each of these flavour senses are located on a different area of the tongue. Don’t use anything yucky unless you want to lose the trust of your children!

She’s also done Sound twice and done Touch as well. I’ve managed to find several books on the senses that would go well with her activities:

You Can’t Taste a Pickle With Your Ear: A Book About Your 5 Senses- for ages 4-8, this is clear, humorous look at the five senses will engage young children. Each chapter ends with a series of simple questions designed to encourage children to think about how they use their senses every day.
Squishy, Squishy: A Book About My Five Senses - for ages 4-8
Fun With My 5 Senses: Activities to Build Learning Readiness - for ages 4-8 and recommended for preschool, daycare, classroom, and home school lesson planning, this book presents a variety of activities to explore and understand the five senses.