The 5 Senses
A guided tour in nature with Helen Keller.
— September 22, 2024
When you step out into nature do you consciously notice your five senses at work? I do sometimes. When a pleasant fragrance drifts from our Camellia bushes or the grass is damp from morning dew under my feet. Your kiddos may not know what sense is at work when they hear the bird chirping or see the butterfly fly past but all these senses add up to being memories for our kids.
To introduce the five senses to our children, there is no one who ever lived who appreciated their value more than Helen Keller. Being blind and deaf at age one she grew without two of the five senses. Based on her writings you see that she valued her sense of taste, touch, and smell much more than the average person. She appreciated ever more the value that sight and hearing offers a person. Despite her impediment she lived a successful and inspirational life. To learn more about Helen Keller’s life the book, A Picture Book of Helen Keller by David A. Adler is an excellent read aloud for young children.
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Why explore our senses in nature?
Many activities use a special occasion to introduce the five senses to kids. For instance, popping popcorn or roasting marshmallows. These activities are great for kids! We popped popcorn the week of Nn is for Nose and explored our senses before movie night.
But nature, or the outdoors, is always there for your child to notice. Exploring our senses does not need to be relegated to a special once in a while activity. Instead take your children along on a guided tour of their five senses in an environment they are in frequently.
By doing so the next time they are in that environment they will have an extra appreciation for their ears, nose, taste buds, skin, and eyes.
The 5 senses for preschool is one activity in the week of lessons, Nn is for Nose. Activity ideas, coloring pages, book suggestions, and more are all centered around the theme of the senses. Check it out at the button below, it’s entirely free!
5 Senses activity for preschool.
You can easily step outside with your child and randomly choose a sense to begin with but before you do I recommend seeing how we do it in our home. The senses have been thought out in a specific order for this activity. I have also included interesting tidbits for each sense you can share with your child.
Sight
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” ~ Helen Keller
I remember learning about Helen Keller in school and being asked to close our eyes and walk around. I tried it at home that evening too, the difficulty was astounding. Although I grew up in the same house since I could crawl I ran into everything. Sight is, arguably, the most important sense. Yet we take it for granted most everyday. Our eyes keep us out of danger before most other senses and allow us to conduct everyday activities with ease, such as reading.
Sight is highlighted first on our tour because we benefit from it so much. We will be using it to help us conduct the rest of the tour so we might as well make sure it is mentioned up front.
Begin your tour with a walk in nature. Allow your child some time to become comfortable with their surroundings. Now, lightly discuss what they see around them. Green leaves on trees, brown bark on tree trunks, yellow flowers, a red bird, and blue sky.
After your child has made a list, discuss the sense of sight on their level. “There are five senses and one is the sense of sight. We use what to see with?…That’s right! We use our eyes to see. Our eyes give us sight.”
Touch
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” ~ Helen Keller
Help your child choose items to compare textures with. Choose items such as leaves, bark, rocks, flower petals, etc. Compare the textures by having your child rub them between their fingers. Soft and hard, smooth and rough. Some leaves are fuzzy while others are silky. Certain flower’s petals are thin and fragile while others are stiff and strong.
If it is a sunny day and there is shadow, have them place both hands on the sunny side and the shaded side. Ask them if they feel the difference.
Smell
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller sums up the beauty of our olfactory system perfectly. This system does more than protect us from rotten foods, it brings back memories from years and years ago. Many times I have experienced a sudden overwhelm of a memory simply because a scent is recognized.
Almost every year the women in my family would go to an antiquing town in Indiana called Shipshewana. There the stores had such a distinct and overwhelming herbal smell that I do not experience it often anymore. But occasionally I am lucky enough to wander into a boutique store or a booth in an antique mall and catch a slight whiff of those herbs. Those fond memories of antiquing with my grandma, aunt, sister, and mom wash over me all over again. Little memories that have faded for years somehow resurface in that brief moment of recollection.
Even though our sense of smell may not seem very important, it links us to our past in an extraordinary way.
Back to your tour, let’s explore some of the delicious scents around you and your child. Flowers are easy targets. The buttery or floral scents are captivating. But also consider exploring scents of leaves by tearing them in half. Compare the scents of trees, pines are obvious ones you are guaranteed a strong scent from. Of course, if a plant does not have a smell, acknowledge it. That’s okay, simply seek something else.
Taste
“Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again.” ~ Helen Keller
Now is the best time to explain why we do not taste things in nature. Many plants are not edible and could hurt us. Instead talk about some plants that they eat at dinner. How they hate broccoli but love carrots. Why is that?
Hearing
“Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.” ~Helen Keller
Before introducing hearing, ask your child to review the senses they know. Point to the body parts as you both name the five senses. Sight -our eyes see. Touch -our skin feels. Smell – our nose smells. Taste – our tongue tastes. Now, tell your child there is one more.
Have them close their eyes. Don’t speak and let them listen. If they break the silence then ask them what they hear. If they are struggling to identify noises help them with the nearby birdsong or faraway traffic noises.
Don’t take what you have for granted.
By performing this activity in nature you child will connect with nature on a new level and possibly appreciate their 5 senses much more than before. To wrap up the activity, grab the books, Look, Listen, Taste, Touch, Smell by Pamela Nettleton and A Picture Book of Helen Keller by David A. Adler. Both are excellent reads to summarize what your child learned today.
I will end this activity with a paragraph from Helen Keller’s essay, Three Days To See.
“I who am blind can give one hint to those who see – one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most delightful.” ~ Helen Keller
Nn is for Nose activities.
If you enjoyed this activity let me know in the comments. If you think others would enjoy doing this activity with their children in their homeschool please share with a friend. To find more activities from the Nn is for Nose week, follow the link.
Nn is for Nose is only one week in a 26 week curriculum, Letter of the Week. Teach your preschooler the alphabet, science, math, art, and so much more.
A Guided 5 Senses Tour In Nature
Activity Instructions
Materials needed
- Nature
Instructions
- Plan a day to go on a walk.
- Discuss the sight sense first by discussing what your child sees around them.
- Choose a plant or two whether it be a bush, tree, flower, etc. and pick a leaf from both or a leaf and a flower.
- Compare the feel of the different leaves; some are fuzzy while others are smooth. Or how some flower’s petals are thin and fragile while others are stiff. Or the barks on trees. Or the cool dirt and warm grass. There are lots of different things to explore with our sense of touch in nature.
- Next up is the sense of smell. Flowers are easy ones but try a leaf too by breaking/tearing it. If you don’t smell anything, state that too. There’s nothing wrong with a plant not smelling like something.
- Now is the time to discuss why we don’t use our sense of taste when in nature because many plants are not edible and could hurt us.
- Lastly, continue on your walk and ask your child what senses they’ve used. Review with prompting as needed. Once you get through the four you’ve completed, ask them what the 5th sense is that they haven’t used yet.
- The sense of hearing. Pause on your walk and have them close their eyes and just listen to the world around them, what do they hear? If they’re struggling to identify noises, prompt them with one that you hear. Wind rustling through the leaves, birds, or even traffic or a dog barking.
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