Are wondering how to teach the 5 senses? Maybe you are looking for preschool, kindergarten or first grade 5 senses worksheets or activities. Do you need lesson plans for the 5 senses? Teaching the 5 senses to preschoolers, kindergarteners or first graders can become a bit boring or routine, or it can become an amazing hands on adventure! If you are looking for new ideas,
You have come to the right place!
Lesson Plans for the Five Senses
Preschool lesson plans are different than lesson plans in the upper grades. You can use the same 6-point lesson plan with 1) a hook, 2) an objective statement, 3) the lesson, 4) guided practice, 5) independent practice and 6) closure/assessment, but you will need to spread the parts over several days. You might show the students Kaleidoscopes, or viewfinders and talk about what they can see. Then during circle time, I would state my objective and take a few minutes to have a discussion. I would then tell them that the Kaleidoscopes and view finders as well as other tools for seeing things (glasses, a microscope, magnifying glass) will be available during free-choice time. Then, during free choice time, talk about it some more. The closure could be a cut-and-paste activity or another type of “take home” project to show what they have been learning about.
“Self-awareness is your awareness of the world, which you
experience through the five senses (sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell).
Pay attention to your sensory impressions and be aware of those
five ways that the world comes to you.” ~ Deepak Chopra
How to Teach the Sense of Hearing
First, let’s talk about the sense of hearing. Kids love identifying sounds. You can look up on YouTube several videos of animals sounds. Here is one that my students enjoy. https://youtu.be/h8Q-jlHBcX. Some adjective to use for sound could be “loud”, “quiet”, “thundering” “noisy” and “pleasant”. My favorite hands on hearing activity is to cut the bottoms out of paper cups. Give each child two cups, one for each ear. Then take a walk and sit down out in nature. Let the children hold the cups to their ears, close their eyes and really listen. Let the children tell what they are hearing. If you hear something that the children are not tuning in to, ask if they can hear the bird, or the car or what ever it is that you want to to listen for.
How to Teach the Sense of Sight
The sense of sight is the sense that many children are the most in tune with. However, there is so much that is overlooked even by adults. A few adjectives of sight are: “bright”, “dark”, “beautiful”, “strange” and “colorful”. A fun way to help children focus on the individual things that they can see look through binoculars. Of course looking through real binoculars can be very interesting and a lot of fun, I am talking about using toilet paper tubes to make binoculars. Us a short piece of yarn to connect two toilet paper tubes. (only a few inches, or you will be untangling the binoculars each time you want to use them) Go for a walk and let the children look and tell what they are seeing. Binoculars make you focus on one specific area.
How to Teach the Sense of Smell
The smell is a powerful sense. The smell of homemade bread brings me back to my childhood. mrsplemonskindergarten.com has some great ideas for making smelling bottles. https://pin.it/1rPMj14 You can use empty spice bottles or baby food jars. Cover the bottle with paper, so that children cannot see the contents. Have pictures of the items that the children are smelling and see if the children can match the smell to the correct picture. You could even do this as a relay race. Have two sets of bottles, so that each team has the same smells and the same pictures. Have a child run down, pick a bottle, smell it and if it is correct, they go back and tag the next person in line. If it is not correct, they have to try another bottle. Here are a few suggestions for adjectives of smell: “delicious”, “gross”, “stinky”, “fresh” and “pleasant”.
How to Teach the Sense of Touch
Touch is the next of the five senses that we are going to talk about. We use our hands everyday to help make sense of the world around us. Our sense of touch protects us from holding on to something that is too hot or too cold. For my favorite “touch” activity, prepare a zip lock bag for each child. Include 5 or 6 samples of different textures. You could use sandpaper, something fuzzy, something smooth, something bumpy etc. Have the children go on a texture hunt. Have them feel one item from their bag and hunt for something that has the same or close to the same texture. Here are some adjectives of touch: “soft”, “hard”, “bumpy”, “hot” and “rough”.
How to Teach the Sense of Taste
Children love learning about taste, especially when you have lots of yummy things for them to try. Many children will taste anything, while others are very picky and will not venture beyond what they know. Have a tasting table with lots of choices of things that kids know, and some new things as well. Make sure to find samples of things that are: salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and don’t forget bitter. I usually buy some dark chocolate to put out on our tasting table. I feel almost a little bad when a child is expecting a sweet bite of chocolate and taste bitter chocolate instead. And most importantly, have a garbage can nearby for kids who need to spit out something that they don’t like.
Now that you know how to teach the five senses remember to give your students the right words (adjectives) to describe what they see, how things feel, taste, smell, and sound.
“We live on the leash of our senses.
There is no way in which to understand the world
without first detecting it through the
radar-net of our senses.” ~ Diane Ackerman
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