Home Preschool: Letter D and Letter E (5 Senses Theme)

Here is the Dalmatian Dog Dalton made at Letter D preschool day. So cute!!

For the letter E Preschool day, we did an "eyes and ears" theme.  I planned activities for each of the 5 senses, and a couple activities to tie everything together. Also, we have a new friend this week!

The first activity, to introduce the Senses them, was Mr. Potato Head.  I set up a Mr. Potato Head with feet and a hat.  He had the arms, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose hidden inside.  The kids took turns taking out one piece and putting it on while we talked about the 5 different senses.  We also played with the Mr. Potato Head toys in general, just for fun.

Sense of Hearing Preschool Activities

We did two activities for hearing.  The first one was listening to different sound effects.  I found this great free sound effects website.  I made a list of a few sounds I wanted to use and pulled them up one at a time.  Some we used were:

• ghost (Halloween page)
• airplane flyby
• burp
• applause
• ocean waves
• frog
• bubbles (Halloween page)
• animal sounds

We also did a parade, complete with dress-up. As I mentioned before, you never know how some activities are going to take.  The parade didn't last long, mostly because the kids were fighting over who would be leader.

Sense of Sight Preschool Activity

On the other hand, the I Spy books were a big hit! We have two Disney Look & Find (Princess and Heroes & Friends), a Nephite book, and a Where's Waldo.

Sense of Taste Preschool Activity

I made a muffin tin snack with a food for each of the 5 areas of taste:

pretzels = salty
cocoa powder = bitter
strawberries = sweet
chips = spicy
lemon = sour

We tried them all, one at a time, and talked about the different tastes.

I've done this activity before. The highlight is watching the kids eagerly taste the cocoa powder.

Sense of Smell Preschool Activity

I used four clear glass jars with lids.  I put a couple drops of clear, scented liquid in each, and sealed the lids. For the activity, we took the lids off one at a time and smelled them! It occurred to me that since the kids can't read, I could have just used the original containers, especially since the extract ones were almost identical. But I liked that they all decided the containers had water in them, and talked about how similar they looked.

Here are the scents I used:

• white vinegar
• peppermint extract
• almond extract
• clear vanilla extract

Sense of Touch Preschool Activities

For this activity, I pulled out all of our touch-and-feel books.  Our favorites are the Usborne That's Not My ... series. We have the train, mermaid, and dinosaur ones.

I also gathered some random items from the house and put them in a paper bag. The kids took turns pulling an item out and describing it with some feeling words like squishy, silky, smooth, hard, soft, fuzzy etc.

To wrap things up, I did a lemon demonstration of all 5 senses.  We looked at the lemon, touched it, cut it and smelled it, tasted it, and I squeezed it into a cup so we could listen to the drops. I had the kids pretty convinced we wouldn't be able to hear the lemon!  Then I juiced the rest of it with my juicer and made a quick cup of lemonade for each of them.

We also made a E elephant, since the Eyes and Ears them was pretty loosely based.