Last week was full of learning as usual! We developed understanding
of the five senses and how they connect to each other through a variety
of experiences. Here are some of our favorites:
Texture Walk: We learned the term 'texture' as we examined how things feel. We realized that our sense of touch can tell us lots about our world. We went on a texture walk around the school to explore and develop this new vocabulary. We realized that you can both feel and see textures if you look closely enough. This was followed with a discussion about safety in regard to our sense of touch. How does our sense of touch work with our other senses to keep us safe?
What's inside the balloon?: We learned that scientists hypothesize and record ideas - and do so by using their five senses. We practiced this skill by each hypothesizing what was inside nine different balloons. Using our previous experiences and sense of touch, we recorded our hypotheses in our Unit of Inquiry books. We even tried our best to label like scientists! We then matched each balloon to a picture of what was inside. We shared how our previous experiences (or lack there of) with the different substances inside helped us identify (or not identify) the correct filling. Throughout this activity we used our newly acquired vocabulary of textures.
How does our sense of hearing work?: We spent some time outside recording all the sounds we heard. We noticed that most of the time we did not need our sense of sight to identify what each sound was.
Ruth noticed that a group of students sounded much louder when they were on the
stairs near us than they did when they were above on the rooftop
playground. So how was it that we were able to hear all the different sounds, and what made some sounds louder than others? We explored this question by clapping in a variety of places:
Our claps weren't very loud when we were on the big field.
Our claps were a little louder when we were on the playground.
Our claps were loudest when we were in the breezeway.
We learned that noises produce sound waves that our ears capture. Richard shared his "ah-hah" moment when he stated that the waves must sound louder in the places that can capture the waves. Bravo! This led to a discussion about sound waves 'bouncing off' hard objects. Of course our claps weren't as loud on the big field because the waves were not contained!
Do we all perceive things the same?: Throughout our Unit on the senses we have begun to realize that our brains each recall different experiences associated with senses that can bring forth different emotions. We began exploring this idea by reading the book Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg. We saw that the ants in the book had a much different perspective than us on the things they saw. We examined this in more detail by using iPods to take pictures of things from our point of view, and then again from the point of view of an ant (very close up). We realized that if we look very closely we may see things we never even noticed!
You can help your child explore at home as well by providing opportunities to explore using the five senses.
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