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 gain insight into how others interpret those same types of experiences.
Incorporating a variety of STEAM topics into these experiences is a great 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! Each of these is a simple way 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 videos, activities, and crafts below. Then, keep the fun going with Learn Along Bingo sheets full of printable activities and everyday learning ideas for children grades Pre-K to 2!
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Explore With All Five Senses
Count Your Senses! | The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!
Grades PreK-K
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!
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 3-8
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.
Activities, Crafts & More
Play a Senses Discovery Game
Grades PreK-K
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-K
Have your child “spy” sight words, letters, numbers or math problems in this super squishy learning activity!
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.
Fetch! Science Activities: What’s the Buzz? | PBS Kids
Grades K-5
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 3-8
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.
This time, 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
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
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.