Friday, October 4, 2013

Co-op Science: Senses

I teach preschool-1st grade science classes a couple of times a month through a local co-op group. My first class was all about our 5 senses!

We started off with a group activity where we ate popcorn and practiced using describing words to talk about what we were experiencing with our senses.


After the group activity, the kids took turns experimenting with the "stations" I had set up for each sense. 

Taste

I had 4 cups with various substances: unsweetened cocoa powder, lemon juice, sugar, and salt.
They had to taste each once and decide if they were bitter, salty, sweet, or sour.

Smell
I had six baby food jars w/ a cottonball dipped in various substances: cinnamon, lemon juice, vanilla extract, almond extract, peppermint extract, and orange extract.  They had to try to identify what was in each jar just by smelling.

Hearing
I had a dozen plastic eggs filled with 6 different items so that each item had a match.  They were beans, rice, a coin, nothing, lentils, and a bottle top.

Touch
Balloons filled with different things to match simply be feeling (sand, water, beans, rice, lentils).

Sight
A magnifying glass with interesting items to look at.  They each had a journal to write/draw about their observations.

It was a great class!  Thanks for reading!

I'm linking up!


5 comments:

  1. I'm gonna feature this on Sunday because it's an awesome collection of activities. Thanks for linking up to Science Sunday this week!

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    1. I don't know how I never saw this comment - thank you so much!

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  2. I love this idea - thanks for sharing. I will be teaching to a group of mostly 5 year olds but a 8, 10 and 12 year old as well. Do you have any ideas for "add-on" type things I could do to sort of up the game for the older kids.

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    1. Good question! I always use the older kids to help out with the little ones. ;) I wonder if you could find some more detailed information about how the senses are processed by the brain using the Nervous and Respiratory systems?

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  3. What are the extra ideas on the back? I love this idea

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