We have transitioned from our unit about our bodies to learning about our 5 senses! This week we have been focusing on our sense of sight and realizing just how important it is to us in our daily lives. It has been fun to come up with experiences that make the students realize how heavily they depend on their sense of sight. Yesterday I got the easel ready for painting and I told the students they would all get the opportunity to paint, but they wouldn’t be able to use their sense of sight. They were shocked upon hearing this, haha! They were very interested in how this art project was going to work and how their art was going to turn out. Even after they had done the painting themselves they were still hanging around the easel because they wanted to watch their peers paint while blindfolded!
Yesterday at our morning meeting and again this morning, we did another activity that tested the students’ ability to rely only on their sense of touch! I had 3 brown paper bags sitting at the front of the room. I numbered the bags and placed an object from our room in each of the bags. The student I called on then had to place their hand in the bag they chose and without looking, try to determine what they thought the object was with only their sense of touch. I underestimated how much the students would enjoy this activity, haha! They were all engaged and invested in finding out WHAT was in the bag!!?
Their reactions were so sweet when they revealed to the class that they had successfully guessed the object! After this activity we tried another activity in which we could not rely on sight, but only our hearing. Mrs. Cordel made sure one of the students was covering their eyes while I chose a student to go sit in front of that student and talk to them. The point of the activity was to see if the students would be able to accurately guess who was in front of them only by hearing their voice. Almost everyone was able to guess correctly the first time, as we have all been with each other for awhile now and are pretty familiar with each other’s voices! The students thought it was SUCH a fun activity and just like with the bag game, they have already asked to play it again several times, haha!
The 5 senses is one of my favorite units to teach because there are so many engaging opportunities for learning and exploring! We have an exciting science demonstration we will be doing tomorrow that we will observe with our sight and I know the students will find it fascinating!
