My Five Senses

My storytimes have been primarily populated with toddlers lately.  I am not complaining.  In fact, I’m trying to pick some more toddler friendly books and themes.  The five senses was my first major toddler focused theme.  It seemed to work out okay.

BOOKS:

We read My Five Senses by Aliki and Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young.

My Five Senses is short, repetitive and informative.  Unfortunately for a read-aloud, it’s also a little boring.  I hope it wasn’t me.  I tried to liven it up by asking questions, having kids point out their sensing bodily parts.  But there were lots of little bodies squirming at the end.  We jumped right into Seven Blind Mice which I think was a mistake.  I think I really need to restructure storytime a bit and add a stretching/physical activity or a song in between the stories.  (When I started here, the kids only read one book and did a craft – no songs, no activities, nada – so storytime has been a work in progress.  We now sing an opening song, read two books, sing a song or do a fingerplay or flannelboard, and a craft).  Seven Blind Mice went better.  The kids were guessing what the “Something” was.

ACTIVITY:

We did The Five Senses Storytime Stretch, which I borrowed from Ryan the Librarian.  It goes a little something like this:

Rub your hands to get some feeling
Stretch your ears to make sure you’re hearing
Sniff, sniff to test your smell
Sniff, sniff to test your smell
Blink, blink to test your sight
How many figures am I holding up?
Blink, blink to test your sight
NOW how many fingers am I holding up?
Lastly, it’s time for some tongue push-ups!
Ready…
Stick your tongue out!  Up down—up down!
Now left right—left right!
Round and round!

The kids LOVED sticking out their tongues and moving them all around.  This would have been PERFECT in between stories.  Sigh, next time.

CRAFT:

We made five senses bears.  I really liked the idea of a five senses face or bear, but all of the ones I found online had nose as a button (because they have two holes like our nose – we don’t have enough buttons nor money for buttons right now) or perfume sprayed cotton balls.  Gross.  I am a bit of a nose sensitive person (my husband more so) so the idea of spraying perfume on something and unleashing it into a small enclosed space was more than I could bear.  SO.  I was just going to use the cotton balls as is, but when I found a picture of someone else’s five senses bear, they had a piece of big red gum as the tongue.  PERFECT.  The gum works as a taster AND makes things smelly.  PERFECT.  Here’s my bear.