We had quite a few opportunities to practice using our different senses to show how important they are to us. One of the first activities was using our hearing to determine different sounds around the room. I blindfolded them all, which they thought was the funnest part, and then made different sounds (jingling keys, opening and shutting the fridge door, writing on the marker board, etc.) and they had to tell me what the sound was, which they did very well with!
The next day we focused on our sense of smell with our art project. We have officially covered all of our basic colors, so this week was a review with a paint matching craft. Before they arrived however, I added extracts to all of the paint colors so they had to smell the color and tell me what it smelled like :) Red- Peppermint, Green- Mint, Blue- Almond (like the ice cream ;), Yellow-Lemon, Orange- Orange, Black- Vanilla, Brown-Maple, and Purple had no smell because I couldn't find a grape extract so we used it as a comparison as to what they smell like without the extract!
We all enjoyed this activity and I got some fun answers as well. Red they said smelled like a candy cane, Green smelled like gum, Black smelled like chocolate cake (which I never thought of but after smelling it again it really did!), and Brown smelled like pancakes! Had a few wanted to taste test, but luckily avoided that mess! Ha
The next sense we worked with was our sense of touch. I had 5 brown paper bags which the kids could not see in. They had to feel whatever was inside and use describing words to tell the class how it felt instead of what they thought it was. Took a few tries to catch on, but when they did I got some very creative words and even some made up ones like "roughy" Lol. After everyone had a chance to feel each item and use describing words, we took guesses as to what it could be and then I had a helper come up and pull it out to show the class. My 5 bags contained feathers, play dough, velcro, wet noodles, and licorice. Their favorite one to pull out was the noodels as you can see from their faces! :) 
Finally our last day of week we worked with our sense of sight, hearing, and taste. This day I was busy testing, so I had a helper to take care of our stations, which you will see from the pics was very entertaining for the students and helper! Our first station was to show students how difficult life can be if you born or become blind. They were instructed to draw a picture of themselves and then were blindfolded and told to do the exact same thing except without their sight. The next station used our sense of hearing to match sounds with different items hidden in plastic Easter eggs. Two eggs contained rice, two marbles, two coins, and two beans. Turns out you need to be very specific with the directions here on using only your sense of hearing to match them and not open the eggs because after the first group the rice and beans were split all over the floor and the coins were making their way into some tiny pockets! Ha The final center, and my favorite, was the taste testing station. Students were to use their sense of taste to guess what was on the plate and tell how it tasted, bitter, sweet, sour, etc. We then discussed how some of these things such as salt taste icky by itself, but when put with something else they become some of our favorite things like french fries. The 5 plates were salt, sugar, cocoa powder, limes, and lemons.
The lemon and limes were by far the most priceless!!
The following week, we discussed the approaching Thanksgiving holiday and practiced up on some of our skills with a few Thanksgiving themed projects.
On Monday, while completing our testing the students made Thanksgiving day bracelets with a helper to learn more about the first Thanksgiving and why we celebrate it. The next day we reviewed our numbers and colors with some new centers. The first was a color matching Turkey Skittles sort, the next was a small motor center in which they had to use tweezers to remove corn kernals from the cob, and the last one was a candy corn counting/number match. They all did very well and it was a great end to our short week!
Now on to some funnies! :)
"My dad's not working today cause he made lots of monies, so he's takin the day off"
"My daddies not working today either cause he had to stay home with my brother. Mommy needed some alone time away from him" :)
A conversation between a few students after telling us she ran away from home:
"Ya I packed my bag and I put legos, my phone, polka dot blankie, and princess peach my puppy in there. Mom made me come home though cause it was too cold out. So we're gonna run away today after school, but she already knows!"
"Ugh, something smells bad!!"
"That's you."
"No way, men don't smell like that!" Haha
Hope you all had a GREAT Thanksgiving Holiday with family & friends! :)
Thanks for stopping,
Miss Cronin
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