Five Senses (part 5: Taste)

To finish our 5 Senses unit, we have a lesson describing our tongue, taste buds, and the differences between salty, sour, sweet and more.

To teach taste; a fun activity is to do taste tests! If you have older children or cooperative children a blindfold can be used to make sure their is no peeking. In my case, I just asked them to close their eyes and hoped for the best.

NOTE: I have one super duper choosy child who has a very hard time trying new foods at snack time. Do NOT force anyone to play. We are trying to make this fun for the kiddos. We are not attempting torture for anyone with sensory issues or other issues. Also please be very aware of your allergy list and religious restrictions.

Other than those notes, you can use absolutely anything edible. I tried to use a wide variety to enhance the tasting experience. Try to include something sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.

Our other activities included making cereal necklaces and corn cob painting at the art center, dried cereal in the scale at the math center, musical instruments out of things we normally taste (when cooked) like dried rice and beans and lentils, and a fun 5 senses matching game. There are hundreds of books about food you could choose to read at circle time. I chose two about paletas at Spanish. For English Circle I chose a book about taste and then two excellent books about trying new foods even when that thought makes us nervous.

One of my favorite unprompted moments was during snack time. We had just made homemade smoothies and one child said, "Ms. Stacey said if we plug our nose, we can't taste our food. Let's try it!" She was amazed!

So have fun and taste away!

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