Tuesday, September 2, 2008

At Laugh, Learn, Love (a blog I just love) they have weekly themes. This month's theme is the 5 senses. Some recommendations of how to incorporate this theme included on the blog are:

  • Taste--Conduct a taste test. Grab 3-5 different brands of one food or drink and let your child answer questions about the taste: sweet, salty, sour, smooth, crunchy, etc. Since Zhana is only 2, when we did this it was pretty simple. I let her try sugar water, salt water, and vanilla extract.
  • Touch--Make a texture collage. For a few days or a week hang on to any clean trash that has a noticeable texture: old nylons, plastic onion bag (the mesh ones), cardboard box, plastic food tray, etc. Together with your child create a collage of all the different textures you have collected and if possible write down the descriptive words next to each collage material. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time but just haven't gotten around to it.
  • Smell--Play a blindfolded food guessing game. You may want to go through the foods one by one without the blindfold first, discussing the different scents. Then, put on the blindfold and see if your child can correctly identify the food again. Pick some foods that are very pungent and easily recognizable like pickles or lemons, plus some that might make them analyze carefully before guessing. Again, this might be difficult due to Zhana being two but then again maybe I'm underestimating her.
  • Sight--Hold a color scavenger hunt. Try doing this both inside and outside and then comparing your results. Make the list specific for some things (a yellow magnet) and more general other times (something green that grows). You can even make it harder for older children by giving more specific colors that they may be learning about: chartreuse, magenta, taupe, etc. How I'll do this with a two year old is to simply say "Can you find something red?" and so on.
  • Sound--(I couldn't narrow it down to one, so here are two quick ideas.) Go on a listening walk. Write down all the sounds you can hear while you go on a walk. Notice if they are loud or quiet, pleasant or noisy. /Move to music. Find several different types of music to play: fast slow, loud, soft, exciting, sleepy, etc. Together with your child make movements that are inspired by each different kind of music. Discuss how your feelings might change with each new combination of sounds.

Also she gives some links of some sites I'll definitely be trying when using this theme. So far, I haven't spent a lot of time examining the sites but these sound great. The one I liked the most is Paso Partners.

3 comments:

Erin said...

I can imagine Zhana's face when you let her taste salt water! What fun. And what a great blog you have!

Super Fun Mama said...

Thank you so much. Really, I started it because I had so many files on my computer and discovered that with the labels I was able to keep organized better. Also, of course to get connected to other moms with similiar interests. Yes, her look was hilarious--kind of confused. When I asked if she liked it she said "No Mama-not num-num".

Gidget Girl Reading said...

sounds great! can't wait to hear how the taste test goes!