Author: trevor and kara

To explore the world around us we use our senses. This booklet suggests activities that use one or more of your senses to help your family learn and explore together.
Table of Contents:
Sight Activities:
Looking at Me……………………………………………………………………………………..Pg. 3
Useful Handful lenses…………………………..………………………………………………Pg. 3
Color Walk……………………………………………………………………………………………Pg. 4
Shape Walk………………………………………………………………………………………….Pg. 5
Scavenger Hunt…………………………………………………………………………………..Pg. 6
You Can Make and See Rainbows…………………………………………………….Pg. 7
Light to See………………………………………………………………………………………….Pg. 8
Smell Activity:
Interesting Scents………………………………………………………………………………..Pg. 9
Touch Activity:
Touch Collage…………………………………………………………………………………...Pg. 10
Sound Activity:
Shake, Rattle, and Roll…………………………………………………………………....Pg. 11
Taste Activity:
Does The Sense of Taste Work Alone?...................................................Pg. 12

You may wish to try some of the following explorations at home to nurture a sense of wonder and develop Science Literacy in your child.
USEFUL HANDS LENSES
Family Science Connection:
At home, with the help of an adult, find three objects to look at under the magnifying glass. Observe and describe the chosen objects. Do they now look differently ? How?
Comments or Questions that could add a sense of wonder to this activity:
When you magnified this object, how did it look different?
What can you see now that you could not before?
LOOKING AT ME
At home during a break, put two family members’ hands together and observe and describe color, size, shape, and texture differences and similarities. Do the same observation with other family members and other body parts. Talk about physical traits that are most common in the family. Hair colour, skin shades and shape of hands or toes are some traits that can be classified as common for your family.
Comments or Questions that could add a sense of wonder to this activity:
Do your thumbs all have the same shape? Do your fingers?
What other parts of our bodies look alike?

COLOR WALK
At home, ask your child to find an object which is of the colour he or she likes best. Talk about why your child likes that colour and find other objects in the house or outside which are of that colour. Together, describe the colour of each of the objects that are of the same colour. Arrive at the idea that there are many shades of the same colour – a green leaf may be a darker shade than green jello etc. You can ask your child to make groups within the colour. It will be interesting to note how they choose to group the colored objects.
You can continue to nurture a sense of wonder by choosing a different colour on another day- e.g. red.
Comments or Questions that could add a sense of wonder to this activity:
What is it that you like about your favorite colour?
Let’s count all the things in the house that have your favorite colour in them.

A SHAPE WALK
Look for objects in the environment which are the same or similar to a particular shape. Choose a shape your child knows well- e.g. a square or circle. Give your child that shape cut out of paper to use for comparison when you are together on the walk.
Comments or Questions that could add a sense of wonder to this activity:
What do you notice that looks like a square?
Can you find a bigger square? A smaller one?
Are there any squares up high? On the ground?
Talk about what they see which is like the chosen shape. When you get home, they can draw and colour a picture which features the chosen shape as represented in the environment.
This Shape walk can be expanded to include other shapes in future walks outside or in a scavenger hunt within a house- e.g. “What can you find in the house that looks like a …..(circle), (rectangle), (oval), (triangle) etc. Doing “shape” walks such as these help children to develop grouping or classifying skills.

SCAVENGER HUNT
Scavenger hunts can be lots of fun while learning new ideas. Look around your neighborhood or nearby park to discover new things. Here is a list of things your child may discover:
Birds and other animals- different shapes, colors, sizes and sounds etc.
Trees- different colours, sizes, shapes, textures, etc.
Seeds - different colours, sizes, shapes, textures, ways of moving, etc.
Sky – colours, clouds and their shapes, sun, stars, etc.
Weather – wind, heat, cold, rain, snow, etc.
Together:
Describe the things you see and continue to hunt for objects outside that are new and different to the senses.
Comments or questions that may add a sense of wonder to this activity:
Which of the things that we found are somewhat alike (e.g. same colour, size, texture)?
How are they different?
Let’s try to group the things that are most alike. Maybe all the seeds can be grouped together or all the things that are green.

You Can Make and SEE……… Rainbows!
Help your child split white light from the sun into colours of the rainbow.
Talk about light from the sun- color etc. Together, fill a glass with water and place it in a sunny window. Move the glass of water around until you both see rainbows on a surface. You can also use a piece of white paper to act as a screen to catch the rainbow so it shows up better
Comments/Questions to encourage a sense of wonder:
Help your child compare the colour of the sun’s light before and after passing through the glass of water.
Try different sunny places with the same set up. Does the order of the colours stay the same?
Look around the room to note if there are any other example of light splitting – e.g. through crystals, mirrors etc.
Hanging a crystal in a child’s room to catch the light and split it will serve to reinforce this inquiry.

LIGHT TO SEE
At bedtime, read a story using only a flashlight. After you finish reading the story turn off the flashlight and discover if you can see the pages of the story in the dark. Now turn on the flashlight again and talk about the need for us as human beings to use light to see and observe our surroundings. It’s also fun to turn the light on and off to watch the pupils of the eyes close. That’s another observation about light and how it makes our eyes react without awareness. Allow the child to continue and explore darkness with a flashlight.
Comments or Questions that may add a sense of wonder to this activity:
Look at the very middle of one of my eyes and see the black part. Is the black part small? Show me on paper how small.
I’m going to close my eyes and open them and when I open them, look at the black part again and see if that black part changes. What do you think made my eyes change?

INTERESTING SCENTS
Take a trip to a store where one can find lots of interesting scents. A perfume store or flower shop is a good place to go to find a variety of odors. Try smelling five different fragrances and see if you and your child can identify the scents. Talk about which one scent is the strongest and which one has a very light scent. Classify them into strongest to lightest scents. Then pick the one scent that each of you do not like and compare it with your favorite scent. What smells so great about the scent you do like? (CAUTION: Avoid this activity if your child has respiratory allergies that are triggered by perfume vapors or other types of odors.)
Comments or Questions that may add a sense of wonder to this activity:
What part of our body do we use to smell things?
The things I like best about the favorite scent I chose are…

A TOUCH COLLAGE
At home, have you and your child find small pieces of leftover material to glue onto recycled cardboard. Try using a variety of textured items to glue as you make a touch collage. Macaroni, crayon shavings, fabric, popsicle sticks, or scrap paper are a few things you choose for your collage. Before you start gluing, feel each item and identify it by texture, weight, size, and colour. When your child is finished gluing and everything is dry, together count how many objects are on the touch collage.
Comments or questions that may add a sense of wonder to this activity:
Name the items on the collage that feel rough, soft, bumpy, and smooth
Tell me what you like best about your touch collage.

SOUND: SHAKE, RATTLE, AND ROLL
Ask your child to find objects in the home that will make sounds. Some objects to pick that would make great sounds to guess are beans in a bag, cereal in a box, a baby’s rattle, a barking dog, a bell, or water from the faucet. Have child lead an older family member around the house making sure that that person’s eyes are closed. Have the child make the sound of that object and then have the person guess what object made the sound. Talk about how important it is to listen to different sounds and how each sound the children made was easy or hard to identify. After five sounds are identified, switch places and let the children be the ones who guess.
Comments or questions to encourage a sense of wonder:
You picked some great sounds to have me guess! Which sound did you like the best? Was that sound loud or soft?
Did the sound you picked remind you of other sounds, and what are those sounds?

When traveling through water, sound moves around four times faster than when it travels through air.

DOES THE SENSE OF TASTE WORK ALONE?
Help your child to investigate if the sense of taste works alone to give information about a food.
Resources: a couple of pieces fruit such as apple, pear, and vegetables like potato, onion; optional - a blindfold; a nose clip.
At home cut up several different fruit /vegetables into small pieces and place each kind on a separate plate. Blindfold or ask your child to close his/her eyes and pinch their nose with their fingers or a nose clip to dull their sense of smell. In turn, have him or her do a taste test with a swig of water to wash the mouth out between tastings. Can your child name the foods with his/her nose plugged? Compare- still blindfolded- with the nose unpinched. Is there a difference in his/her response?
Next hold a piece of onion under your child’s nose while you put a piece of fruit in his/her mouth. What does he/she taste?
Trade place with your child and let him/her try the test on you. Have fun!
Comments/Questions to encourage a sense of wonder:
Recall times when each of you had a cold and it affected your taste of foods.
Make connections how our senses do not seem to work alone but are connected to bring us information about the things around us in our world.

Some Questions and Comments That Help Children Think and Learn in Science
“What makes you think so?”
“What would happen if…….?”
“I don’t know. What could we do to find out?”
“ I am not sure what you mean. Try telling me again.”
“Well, what do you think it is?”
“Does that (sound) (object) (smell) (texture) remind you of anything?” What?
“How are the two objects/things alike? Different?”
“Which o f these things belong together? Why do you think that?”
“Does this remind you of something you’ve seen before? What?”
“Can you think of a way to find out…….”
“Try drawing a picture that shows me how (something works or eats etc.…..)
“How do you think you can make that work better?”
“What do you think you would do next?”
“How would you describe it?”
What does it look/feel/smell/sound like?”
The final payoff in using such types of comments and questions on a regular basis is that you will begin to hear your children ask such types. When children can ask themselves questions that lead to further explorations, they are on their way to becoming “Scientists”.
Be sure to give children time to think after asking a question- wait at least 3 seconds.
Used with permission, excerpt from A Head Start on Science NSTA Press (p. Xv, Xvi)

References:
A Head Start on Science: Encouraging A Sense of Wonder, Williams C Ritz, Editor, NSTA Press , Arlington, Virginia 2007 ISBN 978-1-93353-02-1
Sound fact: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/sound.html

Brought to you by:

Composed By:
Bev Williams
Kara MacPhee
Natasha MacLean
Tara Aalders