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.
- As a teacher you say “start counting” wait 10 seconds, and then “stop counting”
- 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.
