5 Senses

12-14-2014

Can you imagine what your everyday life would be like without your five senses?  This week, the students explored what it would be like to lose some of their senses and relied on others.  The kindergarten had to use their sense of hearing to identify different sounds.   They learned that ear makes up two separate parts; the outer ear and the inner ear.  Your ear is made up of cartilage and skin that works like a cup to catch the sound as it travels past your head.  Sound travels from there to the tympanic membrane to the three smallest bones in your body.  From there it travels to the cochlea (the inner ear) and through a spiral shaped tube with changes vibrations into sound and sends that message to the brain.  Your brain uses the sound from both ears to determine the direction and distance of sound.       

The first graders loss their sense of sight by being blindfolded and they had to identify objects by their sense of touch.  The students had to describe to the class what the object felt like.  After they used descriptive words, they had to guess what the object was while still blindfolded.

The second grade will do their activity next week.  They will loss their sense of sight and have to use their sense of hearing to identify everyday objects hidden in containers.   They will learn about the eye and how it is similar to a camera.  The lens of the eye is at the front of your eyeball and helps to focus images onto the retina that is on the back of your eye.  The retina is covered with two different light sensitive cells called cones and rods.  The cones allow you to see color and the rods allow you to see better at night and with your peripheral vision.  All the information is sent to the brain upside down and the brain flips it right side up.  

The third graders worked on their sense of touch with a braille activity.  They used the braille alphabet to decode a message.  They were able to use their sense of sight and touch to decode this message. 

The fourth graders combined their sense of sight, hearing, touch, and smell and had to go through an obstacle course while blindfolded.  They had a partner guide them through an obstacle course.  The first time the students went through, they could only listen to their partner, but could not see where they were going.  The second time the group went through, they could only receive silent signals from their partner.  The third time they went through the obstacle walkway, their partner was on the perimeter of the gymnasium giving verbal directions.