Home Plate Fun: Our Third Week of School

Saturday September 8, 2007

The kids and I continued our study learning about the five senses. On Tuesday, we learned the sense of smell. We learned that a child has a far better sense of smell than an adult. I tested their little noses with different things. I used a cotton ball sprayed with perfume, a lemon, strawberry, cedar shavings, timothy hay, a cotton ball dipped in vinegar, coffee grounds and a cotton ball dipped in vanilla. After blindfolding the kids they were to guess what each item was by smelling it. Poor Chip didn't due to well on this once his nose was stuffy. CoCo did great and figured out several of them. Baba just had fun smelling them without a blindfold on.

On Wednesday the kids learned about their tongues. Coco memorized the taste buds and their location on the tongue. We tested their taste buds with salt, lemons, lollipop and red wine vinegar. They thought the red wine vinegar was disgusting. "YUCK MOM!" They loved the sweet part of their tongue.

On Thursday we learned about the sense of touch. Did you know that there are over 12,000 nerve cells in a 3/4 of an inch of skin. The kids and I were truly amazed by this. There are heat/cold and pain sensors. I tested their sensor nerves by blindfolding them and having them place one fist in ice water and the other in tap water. They both knew that each one was different. One bowl was colder than the other. I also blindfolded them and had them touch different things such as velvet and sandpaper and describe how it felt. It was a great way to use adjectives. We also fingerpainted. They loved this one. My kids just enjoy getting messy. I have to admit I loved this too as a kid. I was always in the mud making mud pies in the backyard and playing with worms.

After the touch experiments were done the kids cooked up a fun five senses lunch. To make this I had the kids roll out some cookie dough, trace and cut out the shape of their hand. This represented the sense of touch. They also added sprinkles for texture.

Then I had the kids take a flour tortilla and spread peanut butter all over it. They used bananas and raisins for eyes, a walnut for a nose, licorice for a mouth and cheerios for ears. The kids had fun creating and eating their finished creations.

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Here is a little fun project I found on the internet to do with Baba. For the hands we traced them out of sandpaper. The mouth was licorice. The nose was a cotton ball dipped in perfume. The eyes were the jiggly crafting type. Here is a finished picture of it.

Here are the books we read this week: