Five Senses

Well, this past week we reviewed the 5 senses. We have a sensory activity planned daily, but sometimes it's fun to do a complete sensory day and by that I mean incorporate sensory into literacy, mathematics, art, scissors and so on.

Favorites from our sensory day were:

*  spaghetti cutting- cooked spaghetti that is

*  butterscotch pudding fingerpainting art and

*  oobleck, which is ALWAYS a favorite.  Cornstarch and water.  This is what I call a "clean mess".  :-P  It's messy, don't get me wrong...but it cleans up really easy.  Washes down with water or sweeps ups off the floor.  Neat stuff!

We also included our tactile numbers inside of a corn tub.  The children dug through the corn to find all the numbers and then placed them on the corresponding number flashcards. For my younger ones, I put the cards in order from 1-10.  For my oldest student, I put the cards out of order, for more of a challenge. 

Tactile numbers and tactile letters.  I love them!  The kids enjoy them also.  Early on they were sand paper letters and numbers.  And you can still purchase sand paper letters and numbers.  I've also made a set of my own simple tactile numbers by using glitter glue on index cards and allowing to dry.  I like my plastic tactile numbers because I can put them in sensory and they clean easy.  They also make great rubbings.  Whenever possible, have a little song or phrase to go with writing numerals, for both auditory and visual learners.  The tactile numbers are great for those "hands-on" kinesthetic learners (another good activity for these pupils is to have the letter or number taped to the floor and let them use cars to drive on the "road" or have the child themselves move on the taped letter or number.)  Here is a song I use.

Tune: chorus of Skip to My Lou
One-
Come right down and that is all.
Come right down and that is all.
Come right down and that is all.
To make the numeral 1.

Two-
Curve around and slide to the right....
Three-
Curve around and around again... (I also say, "around the tree and around the tree")
Four-
Down, over and down some more...
Five-
Down, around and put on a hat...
Six-
Curve around and curl it up...
Seven-
Slide to the right and slant on down...
Eight-
Make and S and close the gate...
Nine-
Make a circle then a line...

Here's another activity we did this week, coming back to the 5 Senses.  It was a planned scissor activity with an added literacy component. 

They cut out the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and hand and glued them onto a 12"x18" piece of construction paper.  I had folded their chosen color of paper in half so that they would glue their cut pieces in a somewhat even line and to keep them from gluing where I wanted to write.  We had learned a new song this week, so we reviewed the song at this point. It's easy enough with this song to sing the senses in the order they glued their pictures to reinforce left to right. 

The Five Senses

Tune:  Where is Thumbkin?

Five senses.  Five senses.

We have them.  We have them.

Seeing, hearing, touching

Tasting and smelling.
Where are five.  There are five.

Then we opened up their paper and made a chart.  This was all done with them dictating and me writing.  To conserve space, I summarized what they said with a one word description, if possible.  This is definitely an activity you are going to want to do on more of a 1:1 basis, instead of a group. Have a great weekend!