Lesson Plan #: AELP-BSS0001
Author: Mary L. Nisewander
School or Affiliation: London Elementary, OR
Endorsed by: These lesson plans are the result of the work of the teachers who have attended the Columbia Education Center’s Summer Workshop. CEC is a consortium of teacher from 14 western states dedicated to improving the quality of education in the rural, western, United States, and particularly the quality of math and science Education. CEC uses Big Sky Telegraph as the hub of their telecommunications network that allows the participating teachers to stay in contact with their trainers and peers that they have met at the Workshops. Date: May 1994
Grade Level(s): Kindergarten
Subject(s):
- Health/Body Systems and senses
Overview:
The primary focus of this lessons is on young children as individuals, and how they respond to the stimuli in their world around them. It discusses the senses, and introduces the parts of the body that are sense organs and develops the concept that using the senses helps people learn about the world around them.
Purpose:
The lesson will provide meaningful, literature-based experiences which assist the students to develop, practice, and apply critical thinking process skills. The students are given the opportunity to use, practice, and apply those processes which are most compatible with their appropriate developmental level. The following basic process skills are presented in experiences which facilitate the children’s’ advancement toward higher levels of cognitive maturation, therefore towards more advanced thinking patterns.
Basic Process Skills:
Objectives:
Activities and Procedures:
Vocabulary: senses, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, hands, skin.
Time Frame: 15 – 30 minutes per lesson.
Note: There are a total of 5 lessons for this unit
Group Size: Whole class and small group.
When the students are not in the room, place a hot air popcorn popper filled with popcorn on a low table covered with a box. Students will sit on the floor in front of the table. Plug in the popcorn popper. Ask: How can we find out what is under this mystery box? Discuss: Using their senses helps to learn about unknown things.
Remove the box for the students to see what is underneath. Give each student a sample of the popcorn. Ask: What does the popcorn feel like? What does popcorn taste like? What sound is made when you eat popcorn?
Shared Reading: Tomie de Paola, The Popcorn Book Closure: Review the senses used to experience the making of popcorn.
Materials:
Extension Activities
One: Make more popcorn for the students. Have the students estimate how many kernels it will take to pop for one container full. Record this student information onto chart paper. Have the students assist in counting out the kernels with portion cups in sets of 10. When finished have the whole group count the sets by 10’s. Write the numeral on the chart paper, explaining which numeral represents which group/sets of portion cups – hundreds, tens, ones. Pop the popcorn.
Two: Put a vegetable or fruit in a small bag or clean sock. Have the students sit in a circle. Have the students guess what is in the sock without looking inside. Pass the sock around and ask the students to shake and listen to it. Pass the sock around a second time and ask them to smell it. The third time around, ask the students to feel the object. Students should now be able to guess what the sock contains. The final pass around, let each student peek in. Discuss the contents of the sock and how they learned what was in it. Prepare a tray of different fruit and vegetables for students to taste.
Challenge: Encourage students to use their senses to sort some fruits and/or vegetables into groups. Students will discuss and share which senses they are utilizing during this activity. Write on chart paper the students responses. They may classify by color, smell, or taste.
Materials Needed
Resources
References:
All About Me, Wendy Pfeffer – First Teacher Press
Free to Be …You And Me, Marlo Thomas et al – Bantam Books
Your Body, Linda Schwartz – The Learning Works, Inc.
Our Bodies, Sharon Wheeler – Creative Teaching Press, Inc.
Learning About My Body, JoEllen Moore and Joy Evans, Evan-Moor Corp.
Shared Reading:
Sarah Garland, Having A Picnic
Tana Hoban, Is It Larger? Is It Smaller?
Suzy Kline, Don’t Touch
Leo Lionni, A Color Of His Own
Jose Aruego, We Hide, You Seek
Marc Brown, Arthur’s Eyes
Rosemary Wells, Benjamin & Tulip
Classroom Centers
Bulletin Board
Goal: To provide individual students with the opportunity to show an understanding of the parts of the body that help them sense their world.
Materials:
Procedure:
Make a large head picture of the children’s favorite person or character out of construction paper. Make the features exaggerated. Mount pictures of objects or living things that exemplify using a specific sense. Attach one end of a piece of yarn to each picture. Ask the students to attach the other end of the yarn to a sense used to learn about each object.
Science Center
Goal: To develop the senses.
Materials: Tape recorder
Procedure:
Make five mini-centers for children to explore their 5 senses. Hearing Center: Listening to a story tape with or without storybook. Make their own tape recording reading the storybook, then listening to their tape recording.
Touching Center:
Students try an guess what each object is in the feely box. Next, through their sense of touch, match each object with their twin.
Seeing Center:
Look at themselves in a mirror and draw a picture of what they see. View various rocks, plants, objects at the center or classroom with a hand lense, or tripod magnifying lense.
Smelling Center:
Through their sense of smell, match each spice with their twin. Checking their work by closing the lid tightly and matching the colored dots on the bottom of each film canister.
Tasting Center:
Students will taste various fruits and vegetables, and describe to a friend how each food tastes or tastes like.
Tying It All Together
Activity: Take the students on a field trip of the school. Go past the offices, near the cafeteria before lunch, and around the outside of the building. Stop at each place.
Ask: What do you see here? What do you smell here? How would the _______ taste ? If you close your eyes, what do you hear here? Go touch the_______, how does it feel ?
Field Trip Ideas: Visit an optometrist’s office. Ask the optometrist to discuss the eye parts/functions, why eye examinations are important, and proper eye care/protection.
Speakers/Visitors: Invite a person who knows sign language to visit the class and share with students why some people use this type of communication.
Helpful Hints: Curriculum Integration
Language Arts
Using adjectives have the students describe an experience or event. Encourage use of multiple adjectives in their descriptions. List their experiences on chart paper and ask the students to name which sense would help them to identify what is happening in each situation. List the senses on the chart paper.
Art
Students will make kaleidoscopes. Using a warm iron and a pressing cloth, melt crayon shavings between two large sheets of waxed paper. Cut out circles that will overlap one end of a toilet paper tube. Secure the circles with tape.