Website Archive - June, 2006
Spotlight on the Five Senses
This month we will look at the five senses of the body and explore sites and activities which help young children understand and appreciate sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Classroom activities incorporating this theme include science, art, math, and literacy.
This month’s websites offer activities which will help young children explore and understand the five senses. Check out this month's "previews” and links to discover more about how we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel things around us.
Children
Scholastic Kids’ Preschool Playground has games and activities designed to help children develop their senses. Listen and match sounds to their makers in Music Match; look, listen, and complete poetry lines in Playful Poetry; look and match colors and patterns in Pattern Fun; and move the mouse to point a flashlight in the dark to find a puppy in The Great Gracie Chase Game.
Children will need all of their senses as they play the games with Arthur at PBS.org. They can create new sounds with household items in Crank It Up!; use careful visual observation skills to match patterns in Virtual Goose; combine visual and audio senses to complete puzzles in Music Box; and apply all their senses as they join in with Fern the Effective Detective to practice their detecting skills.
Parents
Parents can aid "sensory development" just by trying the suggestions in Nibbles...Ideas for Families and using things found around the house.
What better place to learn at home than the family kitchen? Children, especially preschoolers love to help prepare meals, and as Melania Zaharopoulos writes in Kids in the kitchen there is much they can do to help. Two year olds can scrub vegetables, snap beans, and tear greens; Three year olds can mix batter, spread peanut butter, knead dough, and flour pans while five year olds can measure dry and liquid ingredients, mash soft fruits, juice oranges and lemons, and beat eggs. Carefully supervised, children can begin to learn basic meal preparation and math skills as they are develop the muscles for both fine and gross motor movement. Dinner prep time can be a time to cherish – for both the teachable and huggable moments.
Teachers
Preschool Rainbow has many creative ideas for teaching young children about the five senses through science, art, and language activities. Sensory Texture Painting, Painting with Feet, Tongue Tasting, and It Smells Like... ? along with other lessons will help children understand and appreciate their five senses are and understand why they are important.
Pratt’s Educational Resources The Senses (Five Senses / Sensory) Theme includes activities for introducing the senses; math and hand & eye coordination activities; and suggestions for creating Senses Centers.
The Illinois Early Learning Project offers Tip Sheets for helping young children develop their observation skills. Describing, collecting, and recording information are important skills. Here are some ways you can draw on preschoolers' natural curiosity to teach them about science and scientific methods.
[Posted on May 30, 2006]
