Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch ⎯ How do you use your five senses?

Humans understand and perceive the world around us using our five senses. Exploring sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch through hands-on experiments and activities helps hone our children’s powers of observation and awareness. It also gives kids an opportunity to not only describe the way they experience their lives but also gain insight into how others interpret those same types of experiences.

Incorporating a variety of STEAM topics into these experiences is a great, multidisciplinary approach. Take a nature walk and smell the crisp air, build and play your own musical instruments, taste test new and favorite foods, and engage in sensory play with homemade silly putty or playdough – simple ways to make the science of the senses relatable and fun for kids of all ages.

Learn more about how we use our senses every day, investigate the amazing things that happen when those senses “blend,” and explore how animals use their senses to understand their environment with the engaging videos, activities, and crafts below.

Then, next week, experience the world through your senses with Elinor Wonders Why and Nature Cat on PBS Kids 24/7. And keep the learning going with our Learn Along Bingo.

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Explore With All Five Senses

Count Your Senses! | The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!

Grades PreK-3
Ready to count your senses? The Cat in the Hat leads the way with a sing-a-long about the many different things to observe and discover just by using your senses!

Five Senses | Hero Elementary

Grades K-2
Fur Blur has gone missing! How will the Sparks’ Crew find her? Use these Hero Elementary videos and activities to prompt students to think about the ways animals use their five senses to survive!

Five Senses | Science Trek

Grades K-6
How do your five senses all work? What do they have in common? What happens when something goes wrong? In this Science Trek media gallery, host Joan Cartan-Hansen and her guests will answer students’ questions about our five senses.

The Sense of Taste

Grades 3-8
In this video from NOVA: Mystery of the Senses: Taste, Dr. Linda Bartoshuk explores the sense of taste in humans—why we have it, and what happens when we lose it. Learn why the sense of smell is also important to how we experience food.

Synesthesia: Experiencing the World through Blended Senses

Grades 5-8
Three percent of the human population experience the world in a very different way through a blending of the senses; a condition named synesthesia. In this video from SciTech Now partner World Science Festival, neuroscientist David Eagleman explains some of the amazing forms synesthesia can take, and allows the audience to share in the experience with the help of neuroscientist, violinist, and synesthete Kaitlyn Hova.

The Power of Touch

Grades 6-12
Why is touch so important to our physical and emotional well-being? And what happens when it is withheld? Explore the role of touch in the development of young animals, including humans, and look at the therapies parents are using to enrich the lives and minds of their infants and toddlers, in this video from NOVA: Mystery of the Senses: Touch.

Can You Taste with Your Ears? | Braincraft

Grades 6-12
Our senses of taste and smell are crucial when enjoying food… But is there more to it? Learn about Crossmodal Perception – when two or more of your senses interact with one another – and how this happens in the real world all the time.

Activities, Crafts & More

Play a Senses Discovery Game

Grades PreK-1
Springtime is a great time to use our senses to explore! Play this Elinor Wonders Why senses discovery game to find out what your child knows about sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — all you need are a few household items to get started!

I Spy… A Match! Sensory Bag

Grades PreK-1
Have your child “spy” sight words, letters, numbers or math problems in this super squishy learning activity!

11 Easy Recipes for Playdough, Gak and Slime

Grades PreK-3
Slime. Oobleck. Gak. Silly putty. These may all sound like silly names for a messy activity, but they are all ways for children to conduct sensory play  — activities that engage the senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. Sensory play is important for fine and gross motor skills, language, problem solving, managing emotions and more. Try out any (or all!) of these 11 recipes to make slime, gak, silly putty and playdough with your kids!

Play a Scent Memory Game

Grades K-3
Put your nose to the test with this scent matching activity! Our sense of smell is called olfaction, and it can help children make connections with their surroundings. By using their sense of smell, kids can investigate and distinguish between different objects and materials.

NATURE At-Home Activities: Super Senses

Grades PreK-4
Families can use this NATURE at-home activity to explore how animals and humans use their senses to learn about the world around them. The activity will challenge kids to use their sense of touch to match different materials, and to think about how animals like the rusty spotted cat use their senses to understand their environment.

Fetch! Science Activities: What’s the Buzz? | PBS Kids

Grades 1-6
All sound is made up of vibrations (rapid back-and-forth movement), which produce sound waves that travel through the air to our ears. When you play a kazoo, air carries the sound waves from your mouth down the tube, making the waxed paper vibrate. You can feel those vibrations if you touch the waxed paper. With this “Fetch!” activity, make an instrument that anyone can play – a kazoo – and get the buzz on sound vibrations!

GPS: Light and Color

Grades 4-8
Peter, Emma, Aaron, Ixchel, and Kaitlyn’s teacher gave them a special assignment: come up with a colorful art display that doesn’t use paints! Join them at the most colorful place they know, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, as they learn how. Then, get into the action at home and explore your sense of sight with the GPS: Light and Color Activity.

Sweetness | The Botany of Desire

Grades 6-12
Students consider the nature of sweetness and create a scale that allows them to measure and compare the sweetness of several types of apples, potatoes and soft drinks with these videos and printable resources from The Botany of Desire.

Learn Along Bingo

With Learn Along Bingo, children can view, explore, and play as they learn alongside their PBS Kids friends on the PBS Kids 24/7 channel. We hope your family will use it to inspire learning each and every day.

Next week, we’re learning about our five senses. People use their senses to observe objects, organisms, or events, and by using our own senses we can learn about the world around us.

Grades PreK-K

Tune in: Watch Elinor Wonders Why at 3:30 PM on Tuesday, March 16th.

Play & Learn: In this packet, there are printable activities and everyday learning ideas for you and your child to choose from. As you complete each square, mark it off to celebrate the learning!

Grades 1-2

Tune in: Watch Nature Cat at 12 PM on Tuesday, March 16th.

Play & Learn: In this packet, there are printable activities and everyday learning ideas for you and your child to choose from. As you complete each square, mark it off to celebrate the learning!

For even more games and educational resources for young learners, go to the Exploring Nature With Your Five Senses Collection on PBS Kids for Parents.