The 7th Annual Flame of at Eugene Glass School

Are you looking for something to do and somewhere to go August 28-30, 2009? Well look no further than Eugene, Oregon for the 7th Annual Flame Off at the Eugene Glass School! There’s two days of competition and one day of event awards and fun ceremonies. Go to their web site for the information you need to sign up or just attend.

The competition sounds like a great time for experienced glass workers. The categories include: sculpture, goblet, wearable, marble/paperweight, beads, team sculpture/goblet, and the EGS Challenge Competition. You say, “What is the EGS Competition?” This is something that they started last year and it was such a success they brought it back again! Two to four contestants have 20 minutes to create and object with only the materials in the bag in front of them. They have no idea what those materials are. The winners of each segment continue on and compete until there’s the final one on one. Yea ha!! Sounds like a blast. And probably very entertaining to watch.

The rules for the competitions are in their brochure on the web site but if you just want to watch that’s possible too. It’s going to be a fabulous glass weekend!!

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?