Speaking of Crayons…Crayon Keepers at Etsy

The Crayon Keeper from LilBDesigns over at Etsy has to be one of my favorite products over on that site (and that’s saying a lot, since I spend a lot of time over there). It’s the absolute perfect sanity-saver for moms and the perfect creative toy for kids. It will buy you time in the doctor’s office waiting room AND keep your big ole Mom Bag kinda organized – gotta love that. Some kids really like keeping their toys and crayons in order (believe me, those kinds of kids do exist), and this is perfect for doing just that. Her chalk placemats are wonderful, too. I am all for “toys” that don’t require batteries, promote creativity, and aren’t based on some cartoon character, and this fits all of those requirements.

One of the subjects that’s often covered in preschool is learning about the five senses. Understanding our senses helps us describe the world around us and our experience in it, and it’s fun to explore the senses in different ways.

Rock Your Homeschool has a great free printables pack having to do with the five senses. I love the foldable activity shown above because it emphasizes that the way we really experience our senses is through our brains. They also have a sensory scavenger hunt printable, which doesn’t include taste but has the rest of the senses included.

Of course we don’t really want kids tasting things they find outside (unless you happen to have fruit or vegetables growing nearby) but I like the way Hands on Teaching Ideas handled it by including “something an animal would eat” on their five senses scavenger hunt.

Sea of Knowledge has lots of ideas for things to do with preschoolers to learn about the five senses, as well as this free with email signup template for making a five senses craft (you could also trace the child’s hands instead of using the hands in the template if you like).

Use a potato head toy you probably already have to play a five senses game with the download from A Little Pinch of Perfect. You could do the same thing on paper with a potato (or human body) shape and color on the different sense organs.

Simple Everyday Mom has a cute set of senses puppets you can print and play with, or use for different projects and crafts.

Preschool Packets has a whole set of posts dealing with teaching the five senses (the one linked here is for hearing but the rest are linked within that post), which includes a great idea for making shakers with kids to explore the sense of hearing.

Tim’s Printables has some cute five senses printables where kids can match the image to the sense you’d use to explore it. There’s also a body to label but I think there’s only a male version.

Have you read?