sense of smell part 2

how to make a good useful smell: take an orange or a mandarin and some whole cloves. If you are strong enough, just push the cloves through the orange skin, other wise make hole on the skin by using a tooth pick and then insert the cloves in the holes. Your orange will immediatelly take a new lovely smell. It is also a good exercise to strenghen the fingers and as a creative activity

the sense of smell part 1

For this sense I devise a matching game. I collected a few of the same containers over a short period of time (I chose to keep Actimel empty bottles). The important thing is that they are all identical containers. I chose some strong, quite easily recognizable smells, such as mint leaves, coffee, cinamon, cumin, dry herbs. I put the same smell in two containers to form a couple. I asked M. to have a good smell inside the containers and I told her the name of each thing she was smelling. Then I asked her to close her eyes and try and match the smell of the bottle she has in her hand by smelling all the bottles until she would find the right one. As I wanted to keep the smells for her to repeat the exercise when she likes, I covered the containers with cling film, put a rabber bend around the neck of the bottle and made a few holes on the cling film with a tooh-pick

Sense of hearing

For exploring this sense we have listened to some sounds on a tape which M. had to match to some pictures I gave her. Then I planned for two trips to explore the sounds of the city and the sounds of nature. For the sounds of the city we focused on hearing all the noises around us as we were walking to the farm and the woodland area in the park (the two "sounds of the nature" sites)

Sense of sight part 3

This time is all about using our eyes to find small insects. A trip to the local country park provided the right environment and the best excuse to spend the day outside in the sun. What we need is just a magnifying glass and a small transparent container with lid.

letters

I got this idea from a Montessori blog. M. is sorting the objects putting them on the letter their name is starting with. We have done it with animals and make-believe food and kitchen objects. M. is confident in recognizing most of the sounds and letters. Still need some work on the odd V, T, and of course on b,d,p,q... they just look too much alike! She really enjoyed this exercise!

sense of sight part 2

Backgrounds. we explore how the picture changes when we chnage the back ground and leave the same subject. I draw three simple identical houses and coloured in the same colour. I cut out pictures of different types of holidays destinations (woodland, seaside, Australia etc). I then glued each house on a background. I told M. that that was my house and that it was going on holiday. I showed her that my house was first in the woods, than it went to the seaside and then it went to the mountains. I asked her what remained the same throughtout the house journey and what kept on changing.

I then told her it was her turn to make her house go on holiday. She was really enthusiast about the activity. I let her choose the backgrounds she liked best from a few magazines, then I let her cut them out her self and glue her houses where she liked in the picture. She then made up different stories of why and how the house went to the different destinations.

sense of sight part 1

In the next months we will focus on our five senses. I asked her to colour in where the sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell are in a drawing of a little girl. We called her our little explorer. Then in a separate paper, I let her colour in her cloths and then cut them out and glue them on the girl

For the sense of sight we made a cardboard TV which we will use to explore various concepts using our eyes. First of all we looked at visual illusions. She will understand that not always what we see it is what actually we think we see! I showed M some simple examples of hidden figures, then an example of a figure made up of small tiny same figures and she made her own. I did this by using children stamps and stamp pad and colouring in each of the tiny figures. She then made her own, wanted to make a few more: one butterfly, one bee and one snail!

I then showed her some clever visual illusions on the computer on the kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/illusions/index.htm web site. there are many, you should choose the ones more suitable to the age and stage of your child. It was an interesting experience for her and it was fun.