Theme: The Five Senses
Honey Pot is 2 years and 2 months old
Little M&M is 4 months old
This is part one of our exploration of the five senses! We
covered sound, sight and touch through a variety of activities and crafts. I
had intentions of doing smell and taste as well, but Honey Pot has a cold so I
thought I would wait until she could experience them properly. Read on to see
what we did.
* * Update: Part two is now available over here! * *
* * Update: Part two is now available over here! * *
Books
As I’ve said in the past, we have a pretty small local
library. I was sorry to see that they only had two of the books in a series
about the five senses. We borrowed them, but Honey Pot didn’t chose to read
them too often. In addition to those, though, we took home a book called Rain by Manya Stojic. I actually really, really enjoyed this book. It explores all
five senses as African animals sense the coming rain. A porcupine can smell it,
zebras see it, baboons hear it, a rhino feels it and then a lion tastes it. The
illustrations are beautiful and the text straightforward. We read this one
again and again this week.
Sound Safari
I discovered this idea from No Time For Flashcards, one of
my go-to blogs for inspiration. I created a checklist for Honey Pot’s
clipboard, and we embarked on our safari. First we went over the list,
identifying the sounds we might hear:
Then we began. “I hear someping!” she’d say. We live in a
very quiet neighborhood, so I wasn’t too ambitious in my checklist. Turns out
there was more to hear than I anticipated! So as she heard more sounds, I
quickly drew in pictures for her to X out.
And even Little M&M enjoyed listening to the sounds of
the outdoors.
Now don’t mock my lack of drawing skills. Okay, maybe you
can. I sure laughed at them! The ones I drew in are meant to be the wind, a
bee, a baby and a chipmunk. Surprisingly, the only sound she couldn’t check off
was the bottom one – kids playing.
Texture Cards
I pinned this on Pinterest a long, long time ago. The idea
originates from The Felt Mouse. And this became our craft for the week. I cut
out small squares of chipboard, and gathered a few odds and ends of different
textures from around the house. I told Honey Pot we were going to make these
for Little M&M, and she was so excited to help. We used plastic straws, aluminum foil, pom poms, a gift wrap bow, buttons, handmade paper, foam, Popsicle sticks and a craft flower.
Here she is admiring her work!
Once they were dry I put Little M&M into his Bumbo seat with the tray on, and let him explore a couple at a time. He seemed pretty interested in these texture cards actually.
I had to supervise closely though, because he eventually tried to bring everything to his mouth. But he seemed to enjoy
picking up each texture and then dropping them onto the floor just as much!
Sensory Bottles
In addition to the texture cards, I also made Little M&M
a few bottles to play with. When he was born, the hospital gave me a lot of
free samples, among them this set of three Similac bottles. So I placed bells
into one, pom poms into another, and rice with star beads into the third. He
seems to enjoy the latter the best!
Here he is exploring them for the first
time:
I put these and his texture cards, as well as a few books
that explore the senses into a basket that we’ll keep handy for playtime.
I Spy Game
To explore the sense of sight, I made Honey Pot a small I
Spy book. The inspiration for this came from This Present Life. I bought a
photo album at the Dollar Tree, and made a cover for it.
Then I grouped various toys and puzzle pieces
together and took pictures of them.
It didn’t seem like I had enough pages, so I also grabbed
these cute color-themed collections that I found at Picklebums, and included
them as well.
Honey Pot really loved this game! On each page, I asked her
to find various items, and she got so excited to point them out to me. “Here it
is!”
Giant Squishy Sensory Bag
We concluded part one of our five senses theme with a giant
sensory bag! The idea for this of course comes from Play At Home Mom. We don’t
have much of a yard, and decided to do this on the back deck. Even though the
water was so cold, Honey Pot loved to crawl around on it. To make it extra
slippery, her Daddy squirted some bath soap/bubbles onto it. She really enjoyed
crawling around, squishing and sliding.
Honey Pot had so much fun with this - we ended up rinsing it off and playing with it again the next day!
Small Squishy Sensory Bag
Yes, we decided to give Little M&M his first sensory bag as well. I just filled a Ziploc bag with water and blue food coloring, and placed a couple of bath toys inside. He really loved it!
* * Update, take a peek at part two, where we covered smell and taste, right here! * *
