The Five Senses

It's our second week of giving following the Play School weekly themes and using them in our school time each day. It has been much better this week second time arund with keeping Asher focused on the activity at hand. I have really seen what a difference just adding these sessions into our day is making with this little boy. I can see his behaviour improve and his mood overall just being brighter. I know that it is to do with the fact that I am giving him more of me - and that is making a big difference. I know that each activity doesn't necessarily have to be all about learning to count or write or the alphabet in order for him to benefit from this learning. I am grateful for this as sometimes the things we do are just for fun!

Theme: The five senses

Each day of the week we focused on one of the five senses - Monday was sight, Tuesday was smell, Wednesday hearing, Thursday taste and Friday was touch. This was a lot of fun to do and because we followed the play school tv schedule as well - Asher's half hour of TV time re-iterated what we had just learnt for the day (a bit of Peppa Pig got thrown in there too...totally in love with that Pig!).

This is how I broke down the week -  

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Theme	see	hear	smell	taste	touch	Family outing
Table Time	Salt Tray	Work on magna doodle	Cooking with different spices	Blind fold taste test game: apple, sultanas, salt, lemon, oats, ice,	Mystery bag/blindfold Cotton ball, piece of fruit, toy car, teddy, pencil, wooden toy,
Craft	Animal masks	Play doh face	Make patty cake flowers, spray with perfume	Cut and paste magazine pictures of food on paper plates	Trace hands and feet and decorate with glitter glue and shape pieces
Game/Activity	Celophane window	Make animal sounds then act them out/blind fold game with instruments	Set up a picnic for toys, wooden food on plates	Make sweet and savoury pizzas: apple, cinnamon, honey - cheese, celery, tomato	Draw soccer players on our hands to tiny game of soccer
Outdoor	Magnify glass search for hidden toy animals	kindy	Go for a walk	kindy	soccer

Monday morning I started the week with a lot of enthusiasm and things went pretty well - I must have had some good sleep or something because I felt really in the zone with starting all this. We made animal masks to pretend like we were seeing through their eyes - so we did a cat mask and a bird mask...Jet just loves birds!

I also stuck some celophane on a window and had the boys look out into the garden - it was cool how they could see everything as the colour red.

Tuesday morning we began with Smell (accidently got tue and wed mixed up). I used a muffin tray and placed all different kinds of spices in there - cinnamon, salt, cummin, rosemary, thyme, sugar - an let asher go to town with what he wanted to do with them. I gave him a teaspoon, some paper plates and some glue. He said he was making a birthday cake - placed the different ingredients on the plate and mixed it around with the glue. I got him to smell each spice and see what he thought. This is an activity that he has actually been doing since he was about two wih a little cardboard kitchen I had made. It was great to see him smelling the difference fragrances from the spices...he loves sniffing like a puppy too!

Wednesday I had some more time as Asher doesn't go to Kindy that day and we were able to sit and do some table time with Playdoh - we made different animals and all the different ears they have - big ears for an elephant, floppy ears for a dog, tiny cat ears, and some bunny ears. Playdoh ended up being conversations with the different animals and then we made the different noises the animals make.

Later in the day I set up a blindfold game where Asher had to guess the musical instrument that I was playing - he loved this! Then he got me to have a turn and then pulled out the blender and the cake mixer and started making their noises and asked me to guess what he was doing - very clever.

We then listened to our favourite CD - the Rio soundtrack. Soooo many different sounds on that CD - we love dancing around to it up really loud in the kitchen, a tone of fun.

Thursday was fun with taste. I blindfolded him again and set up some different things for him to taste and he had to guess what they were: vegemite, sultanas, lemon, salt, sugar and cinnamon. This was a lot of fun for him - the blindfolding part is really what gets him going - with lots of giggles and excitement. I had plans to do some more things with taste but the day got away from us.

And Friday was touch - sadly we didn't get to this 'sense' with some different things that popped up - but have a look at the planner above for ideas if you ever wanted to give it a try. I think I may have briefly been able to get him to feel some different textures when we were out and about on the day if I remember correctly but it was no set activity like the ones I had wanted to do.

We also watched an episode of The Magic School bus all about the five senses ~ this is such a good show for kids this age. Asher loves it and knows it's a treat so gets very excited.

Thoughts: I have found that the timing of each activity needs some working on - but in reality I'm not putting too much pressure on myself, most days are pretty different but usually it's off to the gym at 9am so a couple of activities will happen between 7am and 9am. That actually is working well because the little guy wakes up in a cheerful mood as he knows he will get to do something different and fun with mummy.