The Five Senses

This week, our unit of study was the five senses.  We learned that the five senses are hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and seeing.  We did a few really neat science experiments with our five senses! "See" was also our sight word of the week.  During shared reading time, we read the book, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"  I read it the first time to the students.  The next day, we read it together and students were called up one by one to place highlighter tape on the word "see" when they noticed it in the book.

As we learned about our five senses (hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, seeing) we found out that all of these messages travel to our brains.  Our brains help us to interpret things when we use our five senses.  We made brain hats as we began our unit.  

We are so smart in our brain hats!

During math, we have been working on sorting objects in various ways.  Sometimes we can sort things based on color, size, shape, or number of sides (to name just a few).  We played a game called Guess My Rule.  To play, every student was given a shape (we use circles, triangles, rhombuses, and rectangles of different sizes and colors).  To start the game, I had a rule for how I was sorting the shapes, but I did not tell anyone what my rule was.  They had to use deductive reasoning to figure out what my rule was.  

We used a hula hoop to help us sort the shapes.  To start, I placed my shape (an orange circle) either inside the hula hoop or outside of it.  If it fit my rule, it went inside.  If it did not fit my rule, it went on the outside of the circle.  For example, the first time around, I my rule was that only circles (regardless of color or size) fit my rule.  So I laid my circle inside the hula hoop and said, "This shape fits my rule."  We went around the circle and students tried to guess what my rule was by laying their shape either inside the circle or outside, and I would tell them if "Yes, it fits my rule" or "No, it does not fit my rule."  They were really good at this game and figuring out my rule each time!  

The next round, only purple shapes fit my rule.

It got even trickier in the third round.  My rule was that only shapes with four sides and four vertices fit my rule, regardless of the shape.  Inside the hula hoop, there were squares, rectangles, and rhombuses.  We have talked about how vertices are the corners on a shape where two sides meet. 

One day, our number of the day was seven and we used a graphic organizer to help us with our number sense.  We had to build the number seven with cubes, decide if it is an odd number or an even number, draw seven tallies, draw seven objects, add one object, and take one object away.  We also had to practice writing the number seven as a numeral and spelling it as a word.

At the Discovery Table during center time, we used Mr. Potato Head dolls to go along with our five senses unit.  Students had to build and take apart their potato heads and I would ask them what senses went with the part of the potato head they were assembling.  

At the Art Center, we made Rainbow Fish!  We read "Rainbow Fish" last week and they had fun creating their own Rainbow Fish!

At the School Center, students were given their own "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" books.  They had to trace the color words in the book and then they had to make sure their illustrations were the correct color.

Here are students working hard on their literacy skills with the interactive reading website, Starfall.

Students are continuing to use watercolors to color in their sight words.  This activity helps with fine motor skills and helps students remember how to read their sight words.

In the Book Nook, students were able to look at books in our library and practice our shared reading books from earlier in the week.

When we studied our sense of sight, we learned how the tiny black dot in the center of our eye is called the pupil and the colorful circle around that is called the iris.  We got partners and looked at each other pupils while the lights were on.  Then we turned out the lights.  I turned the lights back on again and we discovered that our pupils get bigger in the dark, and they get smaller in the light.  Our eyes try to adjust themselves to the amount of light they need.  We also made our own eye balls and talked about each part of the eye.

We did an experiment that used all five of our senses at once.  I told students how they are real scientists, and each scientist was given two piles of different white substances.  Their job was to use each one of their senses to determine what they were.  

The scientists touched the substances and said they felt kind of rough.  

Each scientist used a magnifying glass to take a better look at the white substances. One scientist told the group she thought one pile looked like "it was made of small circles and the other pile was made of bigger white circles."

  

The scientists were allowed to taste the substances.  They all agreed that one white substance was kind of salty and the other one was very sweet.  You can guess which one they liked eating more!

The scientists also tried to smell the substances to try to determine if there was a difference in their smells.  

The scientists also tried to move the white substances around to see if what kind of noise it would make.

All of the scientists came to the conclusion that one of the white substances was sugar and one was salt.  They were correct!  We then discussed which one of their five senses was the most helpful in identifying the sugar and salt and they said tasting was the most helpful sense.

Another fun experiment we did involved our sense of smell.  We had five different containers that held scented cotton balls (except one container held coffee grounds).  Students had to rely on their sense of smell to identify what was on the cotton balls since they all looked the same.  We passed around each container and guessed what we thought the cotton balls were scented with.  

Some of the smells were kind of sweet, and others were really stinky!

In the end, we discovered the different containers were scented with lemon, almond extract, coffee, vinegar, and perfume.

To tie all of our five senses together, we made a five senses flip book.  Under each flap (hear, smell, taste, touch, see) students had to draw a picture of something that went along with that sense.  For example, I could taste a slice of pizza, so I would draw that under the taste flap.

This week was also exciting because we got to visit with our Buddy Class.  Our class is paired up with a third grade class at Long.  Each student is paired with a third grade buddy and we will meet with them throughout the year to do fun activities.  To get to know each other, we drew pictures of ourselves doing things we like and our buddies helped us write our sentences.  Then, our buddies drew a picture and we exchanged pictures.  We can't wait to meet with our buddies again!