Homeschooling project-- The senses

This reading with project may help 3 and up kids with their curiosity and awareness and possibly even if they are a picky eater! Make it fun and use chocolate! :}

We got this book a few years ago when we started Sonlight's "little learners" package (I actually got most of the books used and a few I didn't get at all, but it was pretty much what they had) and what is GREAT about their stuff is that you can use and re-use the books for years. Renna was a little too young to get much out of it at the time and now she's really interested in it and even though we've read it to Lily already she's interested in it again.

The picture is the different areas of the tongue where the taste buds are located to identify salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. We put a tiny bit of those flavors in the different areas of our tongues and had fun noticing how our tongues work.

Today we read all about the 5 senses and had fun doing some "experiments" so that they could be more aware of each of their senses. The best part was when we gathered different foods and things to smell and taste and did the blindfold thing so they could guess just by the smell to identify what they were smelling.

Renna didn't like the smell of the lemon!

Lily identified them all right away with just the smell (note: I let them both smell everything and told them what it was before we started so they would have a better chance of getting the answer right.) Renna had to feel or taste a few things after sniffing them before she new for sure what they were.

After we did that we did some experimenting with tastes. What happens if dark chocolate has salt on it? Does it taste good to them? How about salt on peanut butter? Peanut butter and banana? Sugar and strawberry and coffee grounds? (We all liked that one!) It was a good opportunity to talk about flavors and remind them again that if there's some food that they don't like maybe all it needs is another flavor to make it taste just right to them!

Oh, and we also did a blindfold test of texture. I had raw sugar, cinnamon, coffee grounds, and salt and had them guess which was the salt by moving their finger into each pile. "Is the salt #1, #2, #3, or #4?" Each felt different and it was fun to see them enjoy their "experiment" for today.