Branch Families,
What a month it has been! October is a favorite in the Branch classroom, thanks to our creative, exploratory study of the five senses! Throughout the month, the Branchers have engaged and explored their senses, and it’s been a lot of fun! To dive deep into our senses, we did many enjoyable sensory experiments and activities. Soon, the Branchers were discussing their senses during mealtimes, at stations, and while playing outside! It’s safe to say the Branchers enjoyed this study as much as the teachers did! To start the month, the Branchers quickly learned about the five senses: touch, hearing, sight, smell, and our personal favorite, taste!
When exploring and discussing ‘touch,’ we incorporated a variety of engaging experiments to help each Brancher deepen their knowledge and understanding. One enjoyable hands-on activity involved two sensory bottles, one hot and one cold. We talked about colors based on temperature. The Branchers suggested red for hot and blue for cold. Before passing each bottle around the circle so they could feel for themselves, we added food coloring to each bottle according to its temperature. Then, we discussed how our sense of touch helps us identify temperature and texture. Speaking of texture, the next activity on our agenda was the ‘mystery grab bag’ game. Each Brancher tested their sense of touch by reaching into a bag to guess (without looking) what item they grabbed. This was a little more challenging, but each Brancher did a great job describing their guesses using touch. The sense of touch wouldn’t be complete without some hands-on art! Textured handprints were next. Each Brancher painted their hands on four separate sheets of paper. After printing their hands, they chose four textured circles—from rough sandpaper to bumpy bubble print—to glue onto each handprint. Not only were our hands busy with the sense of touch, but our feet were too! Barefoot sensory stepping was a big hit among the friends in our classroom. Be sure to ask your Brancher about their favorite textured step! Talk about super sensory stations!
To explore our sense of ‘taste,’ we embraced the season—so it was all about pumpkins! We definitely got our hands dirty carving and cleaning out our own classroom pumpkin. The Branchers weren’t sure how they felt when helping to dig out and separate the seeds from the pulp, but with their sense of touch, they were able to describe the texture as they worked together as a team to gather as many seeds as possible. Once the pumpkin was emptied and our seeds collected, we got busy mixing and baking! We made two different batches of pumpkin seeds: sweet and savory. The sweet one had cinnamon, a pinch of sugar, and butter, while the savory one included garlic, pepper, a pinch of salt, and olive oil. Once the seeds were nicely roasted, we conducted one of many taste tests for the month. The empty baking sheet shows that the Branchers loved the pumpkin seeds, with savory as their favorite. Another taste test involved sour, tart, sweet, spicy, bitter, and salty foods. The faces they made during this activity were priceless!
When it came to our sense of smell, the Branch room was busy making DIY playdough! But it wasn’t just any playdough… it was coffee-scented and cinnamon-scented playdough! Mixing the ingredients was essential, so each Brancher took a turn to mix and stir until the playdough reached the perfect consistency! The playdough turned out to be a classroom favorite during stations!
Our sense of hearing was next, and each Brancher really put their ears to the test. While they closed their eyes, we played different sounds, and it was up to the Branchers to guess what made each noise. It can be tough to identify something just by listening, but the Branchers really tuned in and excelled at the listening game! Another fun activity the Branchers enjoyed was popping popcorn! Each Brancher had a huge smile and was excitedly waiting for each kernel to pop.
Our sense of sight introduced a fun game to the Branch classroom… I SPY! While sitting on the carpet, the Branchers were challenged to use their sight to look around at each other and figure out which friend the teacher ‘spied’. Based on their patterns, prints, and colors, each Brancher was spied upon their outfit. The I SPY game became quite a hit, so we have now incorporated it into our afternoon dismissal activity!
What a fun-filled and exciting month we’ve had in the Branch classroom, and we are beyond thrilled with the enthusiasm our Branchers show for learning and playing! As we say goodbye to October, we welcome November and all it has in store! Our next study is: Friendship, Family & Thankfulness!
-Ms. Heather & Ms. Gracen
