Date: May 11, 1998

Grade Level(s): 1

Subject(s):

• Health/Body Systems and senses

Description:

When teaching the five senses and specifically the sense of touch, this activity will help the students understand how they use their sense of touch.

Goal: The students will understand the sense of touch, and how to use describing words that explain how things feel.

Objectives:

The students will be able to explain what the sense of touch is, and how and when you use your sense of touch.
The students will be able to come up with one word that describes something they touched.

Background Information:

This activity can be used when teaching the five senses.  It is a useful activity that focuses specifically on the sense of touch.  The students should also be starting to understand descriptive words, which would be integrating reading into this lesson.

Concepts:

Students will be able to:
 1.  Use only their sense of touch by feeling what is in the mystery bag.
 2.  Come up with a word that describes something they touched.

Materials:

Five paper bags
One object in each bag (each different)

Procedure:

 1.  Have a discussion about  the sense of touch.
 2.  Give some examples of when people use their sense of touch.
 3.  Have the students come up with some examples of when they use their sense of touch.
 4.  Briefly go over what they were taught about describing words.
 5.  Explain the directions of the activity to the students.
 6.  Choose one student to start, and have them come up to the front of the class, put their hand in the bag ,and feel the object.
 7.  Remind them only to use their sense of touch.
 8.  Have students think of one word that describes the object (i.e. long, smooth, soft, etc)
 9.  Continue until you have had four students describe the object in the bag.
10. Review the words that were used to describe the object, and have the other students guess what they think is in the bag based only on the four describing words.
11. Continue with the four other mysterious objects until each student has had a chance to use their sense of touch and think of a describing word.

Closure:

Discuss how some of the items in the bag were hard to guess because they were only using their sense of touch.
Explain that sometimes a better way to examine things would be to use more than one of your five senses, i.e., your sense of touch and sense of sight.

Assessment: