Elementary School Group Sensory Activities

Elementary School children interact successfully with their environment using their five senses; sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Their awareness increases when they practice using their senses, or they explore how they work. Children who practice balancing and body awareness skills enhance their sensory skills. And children who combine experiments and play, increase their sensory skills unconsciously.

Chai Tea

You'll need a large pot, cups, black tea, milk, honey, eight whole black pepper corns, eight green cardamom pods, and some fresh ginger.

Group four to six children with at least one teacher or staff member. It's better if you can group children with two teachers. Seat the students around a table near the kitchen stove, where you'll bring a 1/2 pot of water to boil. Pass around each of the ingredients for discussion while the water boils. For example, you can ask about the ingredients in the tea bags, or if they've used any of the ingredients before, and for what.

Add the ingredients one at a time after passing them around the group. After about 15 minutes, bring the boiled water to the table, safely. Every few minutes, add an ingredient and ask students how the tea is changing. Then serve the tea to the students.

This activity promotes the senses of smell, taste and touch in particular, because the children touch and examine each ingredient, then taste and smell it's flavor in the tea.

Classifying Senses

Students will understand the five senses by using index cards labeled with the five senses and picture cards showing the senses. By sorting and matching the picture cards with the index cards, students classify and understand each of the senses.

You'll label index cards with the words, "See," "Hear," "Smell," "Taste" and "Touch." Then have pictures like cookies, juice or a backpack that students must relate to a sense or senses. You can break them into groups, and even make it a racing game against the clock, to see who can match the cards and pictures the fastest.

Five Senses Lesson

Students explore their five senses by putting themselves in the shoes of a blind person. This activity creates an environment they must get around in without sight, but with the senses of smell, touch, sound and taste.

Introduce each of the five senses with posters or pictures. Brainstorm about different things that help people use their senses, like a hearing aid for hearing or a magnifying glass for seeing. Model the types of materials that aid the senses, and let the students explore using them as well. After the group has discussed their exploration, blindfold every other student and have their partner, who isn't blindfolded, guide them around the room. Partners will then switch to give the other student a try.