N is for Nose!

Books

We chose these two books for our N is for Nose day! The first was a simply-written text about various smells, and how some are pleasant and some are bad. The second was just a cute, rhyming book about the many uses of an elephant's trunk. We enjoyed both of these!

Letter Recognition

For our letter recognition activity of the day, we printed dot marker pages from Shannon's Tot School and used our dot markers to fill them in.

Honey Pot did a pattern!

And here is Little M&M's.

Sight vs. Smell

I found this super cool activity from Brilliant Beginnings Preschool. I filled the clear glasses with water, white vinegar and rubbing alcohol. Then filled two more with water + food coloring. Then I asked the kids to tell me, by looking at them, which were filled with the same liquid.

As predicted, they chose the three clear ones.

Then I asked them to use their noses to see if they were correct.

They thought it was pretty neat that their eyes and noses were telling them different things!

In the end, they were able to choose which three were actually filled with the same thing.

Scent-Matching Game

For further smelling games, I created this quick activity out of baby food jars, cotton balls, and various cooking ingredients. I put peppermint extract, lemon extract, vanilla, teriyaki marinade, vinegar and maple extract into two containers each. The kids had to smell their way to finding the matches. It was pretty fun, and a neat variation to usual matching games.

The Five Senses - part two

Theme: The Five Senses

Age: Honey Pot is 2 years and 4 months old

This is part two of our exploration of the five senses! In part one we covered sound, sight and touch. Check out all of those fun activities in this post! Did you check it out yet? Okay, good. Now we can move on to smell and taste. Let’s go!

Spice Painting

This idea comes from Learn With Play At Home. I had seen it in numerous places, where the children used glue instead of making paint with water; but we wanted something simple, as we’d be throwing it away afterward anyway. So first I took out a few spices of various scents and colors, and poured a small amount into an ice cube tray.

I added a bit of water to each and mixed them together with paintbrushes. Then Honey Pot got right to work! It is imperative that you smell each one before you paint with it!

As Honey Pot painted, we talked about how we smell with our nose and how smell is one of the five senses. She enjoyed the many different scents and kept lowering her head to take a whiff!

Taste Testing

I provided Honey Pot with four different foods from the four main groups: marshmallows for sweet, unsweetened cocoa powder for bitter, pretzel sticks for salty and lemons for sour.

Then I asked her to taste each one. “Mmm. Eat it?” she’d ask after each one. I asked her to just try each one first, and then she could eat the ones she liked. We discussed the words sweet, bitter, salty and sour as she tried them.

When she had finished tasting each of them, I asked her to help me categorize them by description. “Which one was sour?” She handed over the lemons saying, “This one!” Then so on and so forth.

Then she tried her first lemon water!

“Num-my!”

The Five Senses - part one

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! * *

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!

We’ll resume the five senses another week, when Honey Pot is feeling better. But I think the first part of our theme was a huge success!


* * Update, take a peek at part two, where we covered smell and taste, right here! * *