Joy School - Senses

Lesson Time: This week at Joy School we learned about our five senses. I look forward to this week each year. There are always lots of fun ideas for the kids to do that explore each way we can experience the world around us.

A tradition that has found its way into this lesson plan is to use Mr. Potato head as we learn each sense. When we learn about hearing, we add his ears. When we learn about taste, we add the tongue, etc.

Since we had five little students that day, it worked out very well for each sense. My son got EYES - the sense of sight. This was great, since he said this was his favourite of all the senses.



Video Clip: While we learned about sight, we watched this Sesame Street Youtube video where Cookie Monster is blindfolded and cannot use his sense of sight. Rather, he has to rely on his sense of touch to determine which item is his cookie treat.

Then my guy got to have a turn with a similar game. A bag with one item was passed to him, and he had to feel it and figure out which of these was in the bag.

After his turn, all the kids got to play.

When we had finished going through each of the senses and which parts of our bodies we used for them, she taught us how that information was passed to our brains.

She showed this diagram and made a model nerve out of pipe cleaners.

I was so impressed with how much work she put into this!

Art Time: We did painting, but first she had added in some oatmeal to the paint. Then when our paintings dried, we could feel the bumpiness of our pictures with our sense of touch.

Snack Time: At snack time, she brought out a variety of foods for the kids to taste. We reviewed the flavours of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, and then after each sample, the kids got to decide which of those was a good description of the food, and then colour in a happy face if they liked it and a frowny face if they didn't. Some things we tasted were: dried mango, olives, cocoa powder, olives, lemon juice, and pretzels.

Music Time: We didn't sing any songs about the five senses, but instead we played a game with instruments. The children turned their backs, and while they couldn't see, she would play one of these instruments. Then the kids got to play each of them until they found the matching sound.

Science Time: We had two activities for science time this week. This one taught us about our ears and magnifying the sounds we hear. She had cut the bottoms off of disposable cups and the kids fit them over their ears. Then we listened to see if sounds were louder or quieter than before.

For this one, she had put a few drops of different flavouring extracts on cotton balls and we passed them around to see if we could identify the flavour by the smell alone. There were some tricky ones! Root beer, chocolate, lemon, watermelon, and vanilla. When I smelled them I knew that I recognised this smell, but I just couldn't place it. It was hard!

Story Time: We didn't have time to read all these books, but these were the ones that she had ready if time had permitted it.

Then it was time for our Good-bye Song, and we left for another week.