Holiday Lights Peg Board

I've had this old, wooden peg board lying around forever and it seems like every school has this one!  The pegs I've been able to find for it are the right diameter but are  so tall they tip over and it's frustrating for the child.  For this reason, I haven't put it out on the shelves in years.
While at Ben Franklin Christmas shopping I found these light pegs.  On the packaging it said something about being for some kind of ceramic tree.  I thought they looked like the right size and was so happy when they were!  (I've since seen them at Michaels too)

This work was in constant use for all of December!  Lots of patterns to be created and it looked so pretty when all done!  The packs come with 75 pegs so if you have this pegboard (with 100 holes) get two.  What a great small motor and pencil grasp activity!

Sense of smell Mr. Sketch marker work!

During our human body unit we devoted a couple of weeks to the five senses.  The Mr. Sketch markers are a fond memory of my elementary days so I made a work out of it!  We got the basic pack of 12 markers and printed out real images of each food they represented.  On the back of each card I used the matching marker to make a dot of color for control of error.  Then I made a black line image of each fruit for them to make their own booklet.

This is how they set it out.

After matching and self correcting each one to the color coding on the back of each card they could make a book using the smelly markers!  They really do smell even when on the paper!  The older child also wrote the name of the food on each page.  We were sure to tell them not to put the marker on their nose or they'd have a mark!

Because the markers are so strong I grouped the 12 papers together with a paperclip and they colored each one separately on an art mat, so that the color wouldn't bleed on to the one behind it.  They stapled it once they were done.

Sense of taste

For our sense of taste we first did a taste test at circle with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty foods!  Sweet was sugar cubes, salty was pretzels, sour was small lemon slices,and bitter was 100% dark chocolate!  They were so excited about the chocolate and I did warn them to take a tiny bite, but they just couldn't help themselves!  We saw some pretty good bitter faces!!

They then glued each food to the paper labeled 'My sense of taste'.  We lucked out and found fake lemon slices at Michaels and cut them in to fourths!  Much easier than gluing a real lemon slice!

Sense of smell

For the sense of smell work we got creative!  The rose petal is silk (a box from Michaels in the wedding section) and we sprinkled rose essential oil on to make it really smell!  The brown circle is cinnamon.  I put circles of glue on waxed paper and sprinkled cinnamon on it and let it dry for two days- worked great!  The cedar is cut from a tree on our playground, and of course coffee beans!

Sense of Sight

For Sense of sight we decided to go with all the rainbow colors!  We discussed at circle all the different things we can see with our eyes and how important they are!  

Some children glued random colors all over the paper practicing their one-to-one correspondence and the skill of using small glue dots, while others glued rainbows like this one :)

Sense of hearing

For our sense of hearing work, I printed out different images onto label paper (so they are like stickers) and then cut them in half.  There were 2 pictures per label.  I couldn't think of many objects to glue, so we went this route.  There are lots of instruments, a phone, a microphone. a bike horn, and headphones to represent what we use our sense of hearing for.  

Before this lesson was presented (at circle) we listened to a CD I have from Joseph Weisnewski (http://www.weisnewski.com/) that has lots of sounds on on it for listening games.  They enjoyed this very much!  Everything from the sound of opening a can of pop to a baby crying!  We then guessed what we heard when the track was done!

We also discussed the purpose of sign language!  We use ASL on a daily basis in our classroom for basic communication skills as well as for finger plays in our songs.  We talked about if cannot hear that this is how you communicate!

Sense of Touch

For the 5 Senses we focused on one each week.  For the sense of touch we put out objects representing soft, hard, fluffy, pokey, and rough.  Feathers, small rocks, beans, cotton balls, and sand were on the tray.  (I ended up switching to actual sandpaper instead of sprinkling sand to avoid the mess).

They glued each item on a piece of paper labeled "My Sense of Touch". 

 We hung them up on the wall under 'Our sense of touch' to display for the month!

All these senses activities were loved and well used throughout our human body unit!