Children learn best when ALL of their senses are engaged in the learning. To give the children the full scope and appreciation of this new season, we dedicated each day of the week to a different one of the senses!
Sight
First we had a discussion about our eyes. How many things our eyes help us with! With a mirror each child had a chance to look at their eyes and tell us what color their eyes are and what they see.
We asked the children: What color is your eyes?
Yitzi said " I have white eyes" that lead to a discussion of the different parts of our eyes!
Than we SHUT our eyes to get an appreciation of the things we can see. We opened them and everyone said what they saw.
In fall what do we see? What is changing? With different leaves we noticed the color changes and all the different types of colors we might see during the fall!
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| passing leaves to each other encouraging patience and respecting our friends space. |
With each child's help we put the color leaf next to the right color squiggle . Some were tricky with two different colors and we talked about the changes that happen.
After circle time, we noticed some of the children coloring. Listening in on their conversations... we noticed they were taking the information from circle time and drawing their own color leaves! (Those Nachas moments when you see they are getting it!)
Ellah "Mine has orange and yellow and its outside my house"
Hearing
Ears! we closed them as we whispered to see if we hear each other and took our hands off to see the difference.
What do we hear during the fall?
Crunching of the leaves!
First we took one sensory table and filled with leaves that the children collected last week. With the instruction for every child to be super quiet (they did amazing ;)!) we listened as each child stepped in and crunched on the leaves!
This is something the children have been doing every time they are outside but during circle time with out distraction and being focused we were able to hear the different noises. we heard some branches snap and some leaves crunch.
Then we played a game to contrast the sounds.
We put out two sensory tables, one with the leaves and one with soft fluffy necklaces. While the children (tried ;) to closed their eyes we put each child in one of them and they had to guess through LISTENING which one they were standing in!
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| while listening the kids realized perel was kicking the leaves rather than stepping on them They realized the different sounds that make |
Some children tried with out their shoes to see if there was a difference!
Smell/ taste
For smell we headed straight to our garden! Our class gets to water and take care of the plants but do we ever stop to just take a smell?
We asked some open ended questions to the children...
which plants smell? What does it smell like?
The children went to each plant to see which of our plants have a smell!
Levi found lavender
Another strong smell we found was the Rosemary!
While we were thinking about our noses, some children smelled their lunches and we discussed the different yummy smells that were being eaten! (Thank you Mommies and Daddy's, lots of delicious food your children were excited to talk about!)
While baking some yummy healthy cookies, Levi took a sniff of the vanilla yumm ! (He asked to keep smelling it;)
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Taste
What leaves do we eat? We got some curious looks..... eating leaves!?????
We took out some lettuce and arugula and different spring mix for them to taste! It was fascinating to watch make the connection that lettuce are leaves too! Before anyone took a regular leaf off the ground for some snack we talked about the difference and what are safe to eat!
Touch
We have been feeling a lot of nature outside as well as in our nature center. But nothing like sticking it in the paint and seeing what happens! :) The combination of different nature objects (pine cones, sticks , leaves etc) and the sensory experience of getting their hands in the paint was a great way to 'touch fall'
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