The truth is— kids are naturally curious about the world around them. And they perhaps love to touch, taste, hear, see, and smell new things. Here comes the role of the five senses. The question is— how you can help them understand how their five senses work?
The best way is through fun and engaging activities that can make learning much more exciting.
Did you know child development experts also say that sensory play improves brain function and encourages better problem-solving skills in young children?
In fact, in another study, it was revealed that hands-on sensory activities play a big role in enhancing memory and learning abilities by a whopping 75 percent compared to passive learning techniques.
Read this article to explore an easy and fun five-sensory project for kids to help them grasp the concept in a creative way.
Five Senses Discovery Box
Read below to find out what your kids will need and how they can create this project.
What You Need:
- A large cardboard box or shoebox
- Five small containers or ziplock bags
- Different textured objects, such as cotton balls, sandpaper, sponges, and smooth stone
- Small scented items, such as orange peel, coffee beans, soap, and cinnamon sticks
- Tasting items, such as sugar, salt, lemon slice, and dark chocolate
- A small bell or musical toy
- Different printed images of animals, landscapes, and colors
Procedure:
Step 1: Sense of Touch
Simply, place different textured objects in a small bag or container. Now, ask your child to close their eyes and feel each item without looking at it. Let them describe how it feels— soft, rough, bumpy, or smooth. This activity will actually them understand the sense of touch. They will also be able to know how their skin helped them feel different textures.
Step 2: Sense of Smell
To understand the concept of the sense of smell, you will need small containers filled with different scented items such as orange peel, coffee beans, cinnamon sticks, or soap. Now let your child take a sniff of each and guess the smell. This simple activity will teach them how the nose helps identify scents and how smells are surprisingly connected to memory. Yes exactly like the smell of cookies that reminds them of their grandma’s house!
Step 3: Sense of Taste
When it comes to the concept of taste, you need to prepare different small tasting samples such as sweet (sugar), sour (lemon), salty (salt), and bitter (dark chocolate). Let your little one taste each one and describe how it feels on their tongue. This will help them understand how their tongue recognizes different flavors.
Step 4: Sense of Hearing
For this, use a small bell, musical toy, or maybe different objects such as keys jingling, paper crumbling, or hands clapping. The fun begins— let your child guess what it is. This activity will sharpen their sense of hearing and also understand how their ears help detect different sounds.
Step 5: Sense of Sight
Lastly, show different images of animals, colors, nature, and everyday objects. Now, ask them to describe what they see. If you have two similar images, you can turn into an exciting game of spotting the difference. This simple activity will help them recognize different patterns and colors.
Conclusion
If you believe, teaching your little ones about the five senses does not have to be boring! Well, it's not. With this simple and fun activity of the Five Senses Discovery Box, you can help your children explore how their eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin work together to help them experience the world.
