UNIT - THE FIVE SENSES EXPERIMENTS

Students learned about the five senses and their characteristics. They experimented with each sense to understand how they work and used the structure “I can … with my …” to express what part of the body is used for each sense.

The touch box
After introducing the vocabulary (rough, smooth, soft, hard), we separated the class into two groups. Each group received one box with a small opening at the top and each student an experiment sheet. One at a time, we placed an object (a pine cone, a rock, ball of yarn, a pencil, and a rubber) in the box and had students touch it without looking. We recorded our findings on the experiment sheet.

Scents
We used four Actimel bottles (long, plastic bottles) and put coffee, vinegar, orange peels, and perfume in each one. First, students smelled the contents of each bottle and tried to guess what each substance was. Then, they learned to distinguish between things that smell good or bad.

Listening to music
We had students sit in silence and asked them if they could hear anything. We then turned on the radio that we had previously hidden behind the teacher´s desk so that students could hear music without seeing where it was coming from. We increased the volume and taught students to differentiate between loud and quiet.


I-spy and I can see
We played a game of I spy using flashcards of different colored objects: a plane, a butterfly, a sun, a bird. Students used the structure ¨I can see with my eye something...¨ The teacher then placed one of the flashcards on the blackboard and had students draw what they saw in a frame (a half sheet of paper with a frame on it).


Taste
We used salt and sugar to determine what was salty and sweet. We started the experiment by asking students what they thought each substance was. As they couldn´t see the difference, each student tasted a pinch of both and as a class we determined which was what. As an extension, students used the previous’ unit food flashcards and distinguished between sweet and salty foods.