Our Senses

This week in the toddler room we focused on our five senses. Exploring the world through their senses can help children understand lots of different things, such as “cause and effect” (how their actions affect the world) and to develop their emotional awareness. Through sensory play, some children will discover which senses are more calming for them. To do this we explored a variety of activities that focused on different senses. For our first activity we explore smell. To do this we explored a range of smells as we made playdough. We added mixed herbs, cinnamon and basil to create the different smelling playdough. We were then able to explore and observe which of the smells we found. Our next sense was touch. We explored different textures through mystery boxes. As part of this activity some of the children were able to guess what they thought was in the boxes through their texture. This encouraged us to explore our own ideas and link it to our own experiences. Our next activity explored taste to do this we explored sweet and sour tasting fruits. When tasting lemons and limes children used new words like “Sour” or “sweet”. We were then able to link it to fruits that we have at home and at nursery. To explore sound we looked around the nursery and found things that would create different sounds. We found bells, instruments, shakers and sensory blocks. We explored creating different types of sounds with these seeing what happens if we shake them fast and slow. We tested banging objects together to create sounds. We then listened to some relaxing classical music as part of our relaxation time. Our final sense sight we went out into the garden on an airplane hunt. We looked around to see how many airplanes we could find flying in the sky. This encouraged us to explore counting and team work. Great job toddlers what a wonderful week of exploring.