Five Senses Field Trip

For preschool, we went to the Sweet's Candy Factory

for a guided tour!

To explore our five senses.

They had us wear these adorable hair nets!

Baby H. had a conniption trying to keep his on.

They checked our purses and camera's.

So I didn't get any real life shots,

(Which I probably wouldn't have been possible any way since I was holding baby H.'s hands down from ripping his hair net off his head.) 

 The tour took us through many exciting parts of candy making.

We got to see them stretching a thick roll of taffy.

This picture is from the online Sweets Factory Tour.

 

I think one of the most exciting parts was to see them making the jelly beans and throwing in sugar, colors, and flavors into a huge vat.  They let us try the unpolished jelly beans. Yum!

This picture is from the online tour.

This is also the place that they make the orange sticks.

We got to watch them cover the orange in chocolate.

(It was from a very long distance, but it smelled divine!)

This picture is from the online tour.

You wouldn't believe how many samples they give you.

Baby H. who has a sweet tooth, loved this!

At the conclusion of the tour they give you even more free samples and lead you into the Sweets store.
Dreams are made of this store!

Needless to say we bought loads of candy,

and I threw my diet out the window!

Sense of Smell

Today we explored our sense of smell!

We read Smelling By Sharon Gordon

I love these books! They are perfect for preschoolers!

They talk about how smell goes from your nose and tells your brain that you are smelling.

It has great pictures and diagrams.

I gathered all of the perfume/cologne bottles in the house and let them smell each one.

It was fun for her to guess which one was for women and which was for men.  Then she chose her favorite scent and sprayed her wrists.

We made some some scratch and sniff paint

(AKA Kool-aide and water)

 I found this cute "fruits of the spirit" tree.

We read the scripture in Galatians and talked about it for a minute.

They both loved painting!

We used our left over Kool-aide to make play dough,

Which was a little fail, but we worked out the problems in the end.

I made my play dough using the following recipe:

2 C. Flour, 1 C. Salt  1 TBS Cream of Tartar {Mix together}

1 1/2 TBS Veg. Oil, 2 C. Water {Add, cook on med. heat, stir until it looks like play dough}

This recipe is modified from Teach Preschool.

Then I added the Kool-aide.

It didn't work.

This is what it looked like.

Totally Blah!

But it sure smelled good!

Which was kind of the point.

Then I added more Kool-aide to our play dough blobs,

and took it over to the sink and added a little bit of water.

Voila!

It worked...

But my hands may never be the same!

Fun times were had playing with the play dough!

So my suggestion is to make your play dough,

then when it is still a little wet in the pan,

split your recipe into fours,

and then add the Kool-aide,

and it should make a vibrant colors,

and you'll save your hands.

Or just make a whole batch of the same flavor.

 

Here are some of my older post's that explore the sense of smell:

 

Scratch and Sniff Book

Where we used Jello to make a sratch and sniff book.

 

Pepermint playdough

 

The Sense of Touch Scavenger Hunt

I think learning about the sense of touch was our most fun day so far in learning about the five senses.

And it also took the most work to get it ready.

Funny how that seems to work!

I started out with these materials:

 

Something scratchy, rough, bumpy, slick, and soft.

And while they watched PBS I cut them into smaller squares.

Then we went down to the classroom and got learning!

We started with the sense of touch book called

Touching By Sharon Gordon.

I had them sit the textured mats while we read,

afterwards I turned on some fun music,

pulled their shoes off and let them feel the different textures with their feet while they danced.

I kept repeating the texture vocabulary words,

Bumpy, rough, scratchy, soft, slick and smooth.

so she would be ready for the scavenger hunt.

They got to play in the texture sensory table.

I had her close her eyes and had her guess what texture she was feeling.

Then they played for about 10 minutes while I set everything up.

We put on blind folds on both of them so they could focus on the textures they were touching.

She couldn't move until I told her what texture to step onto.

The texture scavenger hunt lead up the stairs,

and into the dining room, where we had a bag filled with a little left over Valentines day candy.

We did this twice, so we didn't waste all that square cutting,

I also saved the squares to pull this out on a rainy day.

We went back down and I let them create a texture collage.

They pretty much had free reign to use whatever materials they had played with and glue in onto their paper.

She had so much fun cutting and creating.

Don't you love how it turned out?

I was inspired by Teach Preschool to make a collage.

Go here to see my pinterest board on the 5 Senses.

Here are some of my past posts that would work well with discovering the sense of touch:

Tree Painting
Where we used different tree branches to paint a picture of a tree.


Dinosaur Dig
Where she dug up the letters of her name.
 

Worm Painting
Where we used colored worms (spaghetti noodles) to paint a picture.


Indoor Igloo
Where we brought snow inside to make an igloo.

Dr. Seuss Weekly Wrap-Up

We love Dr. Seuss!

Everyone does!

His books were the break from Dick and Jane books and other formal primer books,

They lead the way to entertaining and educational childrens' books.

I am totally inspired by activities that are connected to reading and learning.  So here are some of my Dr. Seuss favorites:

The first comes from Crazy Mommy

She read the classic One Fish, Two Fish,

With her son, and did this fun activity!



The next idea comes from, Lovely Lula

who made these adorable TP tube puppets:

What a fun way to read a story and celebrate it!

(Wouldn't it be fun to do a puppet show with these?)

The next idea comes from my friend, JDaniel4's Mom

She made this cute Lorax snack, after reading the Lorax with her son.

 

The last idea is from Real Simple,

not a blog,

but I love the idea!

You make place mats out of Dr. Seuss Books!

I love this idea, because I just bought some old books at a yard sale, and I've been waiting for some inspiration.

It would be cute decore,

and a great way for your kids to integrate reading into every part of their lives!

Thanks for reading! If you were featured, grab a button!

There's A Wocket in My Pocket

We read There's A Wocket In My Pocket

By Dr. Seuss

Which is just a silly rhyming book.

So cute.

Every time we turned a page she would giggle with delight

at the little monsters on each page.

So I got out my unmatched socks box

(One day I went through all my socks and took out all of the non matches,

I put them in a box and labeled them "Future Puppets")

M. went through and picked some frilly socks and stuffed them with quilt batting.

We wrapped rubber bands around them to keep the stuffing in,

Then we painted our "wockets" from top to bottom.

M. would have kept going for days,

she made at least 6 wockets on her own until I put away the sock box.

Then this famous Disney Princess came to be.

Cross my heart she made this whole thing by herself.

Love it.

M. Is totally obsessed with all things Tangled,
so it wasn't suprising that she made this as her Wocket.

Here are all of our fun Wockets

Can you tell which one is mine?

I love doing projects side by side with my children,

I think it expands their imaginations

as to the possibilities of what they can create.

This activity lasted about an hour.

Here is Baby H.'s Wocket.

Happy Read Across America Day!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss's Birthday March 2nd!

Click here for the NEA's Read Across Facebook Page