A Brief Description of the Five Senses

The purpose of this blog is to post useful information about the five senses. The five senses are obviously a very important factor to be taught in elementary education. As you probably know, the five senses consist of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. There is a part of the body that uses each of these senses. We use our eyes for sight, ears for hearing, nose to smell, tongue for tasting, and usually our hands and fingers to touch. All of these are important for us as humans to take in the world around us.

Fun, Educational Game!

I thought I would post an age appropriate game for kindergarteners to play when teaching about the five senses! It's interactive, simple, and will help the children learn their five senses by accually using them!

• Sight: Put together a few large cards with a picture on each one. Use them a oversized flashcards for the class and have them shout out what the picture is of. Simple examples: Apple, car, and tree.
• Hearing: Put together a collection of various sounds and play each one for the class to listen to. Let the class shout out what the sound is. Simple examples: Alarm clock, piano, and bird chirping.
• Smell: Pass around scratch and sniffs to the class and see if they can correctly identify what the small is. Simple examples: Orange, cherry, and grape.
• Touch: Place small items in a covered box. Go around the room and allow each student to put their hand in the box and try to figure out what the object is. Simple examples: Stuffed animal, pencil, and flower.
• Taste: Let each student eat a small peice of hard fruit flavored candy without looking at it. Have them identify what flavor the candy was. Simple examples: Life savers, jolly ranchers, and jelly beans.

What If We Lack One or More of Our 5 Senses?

So what if we are lacking one or more of our 5 senses? It is accaully not uncommon to not have all 5 our your senses. There are certain disorders such as blindness and defness that take away our ability to function with that particually sense. There is accaully at least one disorder for each of the five senses. Below are two of the major and most known disorders:

• Blindness is one tragic disease that affects the eyes. There are many different degrees of blindness. You can have a mild blindess which means you can still partially see, but you are very limited. If you are completely blind it means that you cannot see at all. Being blind limits the amount of things you can do, for example drive a car. Luckily, the braille system has helped change the amount of restrictions blind people have. Braille is a coded language made up of tiny bumps. Using this system, the seeing impaired can do such things as read books and be able to distinguish room numbers in a hotel. My grandfather is legally blind (he can barely see but he still can) and he accually has not ever learned how to read braille. He has many different kinds of magnifying glasses to help him read the newspaper and do things on his computer. He also has audio books which read him his favorite books for him so he does not have to struggle with trying to see the small printed words. Another contribution is seeing eye dogs. These are specially trained dogs who help their blind owners do everyday activites such as crossing the street or sometimes even opening cabinets. Below is the web link to the National Federation for the Blind for more information.

http://www.nfb.org/

• Deafness is another serious disease that affects the ability to hear. There are also different levels of deafness. For the more milder levels, hearing aides are available to help people hear. For the more severe cases to being completely deaf, there is sign language. Sign language is a language made up of hand gestures and symbols. I've seen sign language interpreters come into my lecture halls before to help translate for def students. It's a great language that helps people who suffer from deafness to interact with others. Below I have added the web link to the National Association of the Deaf if you would like to visit it for more information.

http://www.nad.org

Diagrams of How Each Sense Functions

Learning Though Pictures: Examples of What We Can Do With Our 5 Senses

TOUCH

TASTE

SIGHT

SMELL

HEARING