Monday Coop: The Senses... Today was my first day back at leading a class for our Monday coop since I was about 8 months pregnant. It was nice to get back into the swing of things though the weather did not cooperate and my lesson plan had to change. I am teaching a unit on the Five Senses. Today we opened the unit with an overview of the senses and I will follow-up with a full class on each sense. Not really because I think it is necessary but because I think it will be so much fun to do each sense and there really is a lot to teach if I get more detailed and a lot of fun to be had with activities.

Today was a real simple and short lesson though. We opened with a Q and A session on what are sense are to see what the kids knew already. At first they didn't think they knew but once one of them said that Hearing was a sense they were able to get the others. We then read My Five Senses by Aliki. A fun, engaging, short and cheap little book that the kids enjoyed. It was also the most recommended resource I found on several of the websites I surfed while putting the plan together.

Then we drew a web on the white board starting with the word senses in the center and drawing five spokes out for each sense and then five more spokes from those for the corresponding body part. The kids enjoyed this simple activity and helped the visual learners to see it. Then we did a worksheet connecting the body part to the corresponding sense. Then my intention was to take them on a walk and have them try to use as many senses as they could and talk about their experiences. But the warm summerlike fall days we have been experiencing have been replaced by Minnesota's first snow (thankfully it is not sticking) and the cold weather. We would have gone out but the children were not really dressed appropriately for that - so we stayed in and talked about how we use different senses and when. Then I went with the kids momentum and realized we were cutting our lesson short today and I let them have free playtime and then a snack. The rest of my prep work went home as homework ( a printout of the body) with blank spaces to label and another worksheet with cutout pictures of the sense and the corresponding body part and a song about the senses.

I will try to update this post later with the actual resource links, but I simply am too tired right now to find them all again. We will revisit the topic in a few weeks again anyway. Up next Monday - Spanish.

Peace,
Tenn