U: Part Two

We started the unit on "Us" last Friday, and we just finished it up today. We've been talking about our 5 senses all week and you can catch the post on the first 3 senses we worked on here.

Yesterday we worked on the "sight" sense and I'm not going to lie - we had a rough day in school. We started and stopped our school day 3 times, and after we finally got going, I spent more time dealing with meltdowns, tantrums, time-outs, and bad attitudes, than I did actual teaching. We managed to accomplish a little schoolwork (emphasis on little), but needless to say, I didn't get any pictures from our lesson on sight. We did do one sight activity where I collected 10 items and allowed the kids to look at them and try to memorize them. And then they had to close their eyes and turn around while I took one item away. They had to try guess which item was missing. It proved to be quite difficult for them, but I'm not sure if it was because it was actually difficult for them, or because of the attitudes we were dealing with. We did the activity a few times, but I could just tell that the enthusiasm wasn't there. So after trudging our way through a little more schoolwork, I just decided to call it a day.

So anyway, today was a new day. Before we began our school day, the kids and I talked and we all agreed that we wanted to have a good day at school, with good attitudes. And so we began. And it went MUCH better! Thank the Lord!

We worked on our "taste" sense today and with that, had a lesson on the Food Groups. I found a number of great printable worksheets on http://www.nourishinteractive.com/hco/free_printables#food_pyramid.

We went through The Food Pyramid and discussed what all the groups consisted of.


Then we built our own food pyramid using toy food. Madison and Noah had to tell me which food group each item went into, then we put them altogether into a pyramid shape.

(Worksheets from http://www.tlsbooks.com/kindergartenworksheets.htm)

(Worksheet from http://www.nourishinteractive.com/hco/free_printables#food_pyramid)


We actually have a nice, warm day today, so after lunch we went out and used a few of our senses playing in the great outdoors.

And that concludes the lesson on "Us".

Uniquely U

This week has been lessons on our 5 senses and the letter U. We have been learning about Us, and how God made us unique and wonderful.

We'll still be doing the 5 senses through the rest of this week, but I thought I'd show you what we have done so far.

The first sense we talked about was Touch. We read a variety of books on touch including a Touch and Feel book on tractors, and "What Happens When You Touch and Feel?" by Joy Richardson.

For one of our activities, I put a variety of items into a bag and had each child reach into the bag and try figure out what the item was just by feeling it. Some of the items included a hairy scrunchy, a wire dish scrubber, a battery, a block, lip gloss, a spoon, a beater, a ruler, an orange, a small ball, a silk leaf, and a tape dispenser.


After the kids figured out what all the items were, I then had them put socks on their hands and try the activity again. We discussed how it was much harder to feel the items with socks on our hands.

We did a similar activity for our Sound sense. I blindfolded the kids and then made a variety of sounds for them to guess. Some of the sounds included crumpling paper, zipping a zipper, jingling change, dropping a spoon, opening and shutting a book, and closing a door.

For another activity, the kids painted self-portraits. (Cousin Sydnee was visiting one day and participated in Kindergarten with us!)

Yesterday we learned about all our senses the fun way...baking! We made banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and zucchini bread. We talked about how we were using our senses and we discovered that our favorite sense that day was the sense of taste! Mmmm!

For the lesson on the smell sense, I blindfolded the kids and they had to try guess a variety of items just by smelling them. I had them smell apple sauce, black pepper, a candle, lemon juice, cinnamon, Nate's cologne, an onion, and some lotion. The kids were able to guess all the items and thought the activity was so fun that they went and found some items for me guess (one of which, was a dirty sock!).

We also discussed which items were good-smelling, and which items were bad-smelling. The unanimous verdict on the worst smell was the onion!

I found this worksheet where the kids had to sort the different smells and determine if they were smells they liked or smells they didn't like. It was fun seeing what they thought smelled good or not so good!
(Found on http://www.firstschoolyears.com/science/ourselves/ourselves.htm)

I found worksheets for all the senses on http://www.tlsbooks.com/kindergartenworksheets.htm. Madison, who normally doesn't care much for worksheets, has really enjoyed doing these and has asked to even do more of them!

I know the book shown is about the "seeing" sense (which we haven't done yet), but I returned the other books to the library already, and wanted to show you what the books look like that we have been using to learn more about our senses. Joy Richardson has several of them, and they have been great resources! Not only do they present the information in a kid-friendly way, but they also contain fun activities to do to reinforce the concepts.

As I mentioned, we have been talking quite a bit about how God created us unique, so we turned our foam lowercase "u" into a unique person!

We also created smelling flowers using paper, muffin cups, pom-poms, and a good-smelling body spray.

(Idea from http://www.twigglemagazine.com/March-activities/scented-flowers-craft.html)

More on the senses to come!