5 Senses Exploration

• Head outside with your students 
• Sit/lie down in a circle:
  • Close our eyes, focus on your breathing. 
  • What do we hear? What can we feel/touch? What do we smell? Can we taste anything on our tongues, does the air have a taste?
    • We can ask these questions and have the children out loud, or it can be a silent reflection. 
  • Open your eyes. What do we see?
  • Can we move our toes, arms, arms, legs, ears? Individually and all at once. 
• Stand up
  • Move quickly (in whatever direction and capacity) for 5 minutes.
  • Bring the children back together. How do we feel now? What do we notice? 
  • These last two sections could be completed a few times over. 

Heart beats

• If possible, complete this activity outside. 

• Can we take our heart beat? What is our heartbeat? 
• Teach the children to put their hand on their chest, wrist, and neck to check for a heart beat.
• See if they can count their own heartbeat over 10 second intervals. NOTE: If your students do not have the ability to count yet, we can simply observe the way we feel and the general “speed” of the heart beat. 
  • As a teacher you say “start counting” wait 10 seconds, and then “stop counting”
    • With this number you can then multiply it by six. That is your beats per minute (bpm). 
  • The result of this exercise does not need to be accurate but rather is to bring awareness to its change. 
• Have the students run around again, or dance (a great in-classroom movement), try the activity again, have the students lie or sit for a minute, get them to try the activity again. 
• Talk about why our heart rate changes. What would it mean if we had no heartbeat?
• Average human heart rate is 70 beats per minute. Do we think all animals have a pulse? Do the smaller animals have a higher heart rate? What about larger animals? 
• Do all living things have a heartbeat? Example, a tree? Moss? A river? (this does not need to be answered necessarily at this time, just to prompt the children before heading to Camp Kawartha. 

Read: Sun Wishes by Patricia Storms, illustrated by Milan Pavlović

• Ideally read the book to your class outside.