Teach your little ones about the 5 senses with these free printable activity sheets, perfect for kids in preschool through kindergarten. Learn about the benefits of teaching kids about the five senses (especially if you have picky eaters) and download the free worksheet with 7 different activities!
Teaching kids about the 5 senses is so important for teaching them about their environment, making them aware of new things and senses, and opening up a whole new world of learning.
After all, when we talk about sensory activities, we don't only mean different textures for your hands! Sensory activities can should involve smell, sight, hearing, and tasting. Getting all five senses involved helps kids understand and remember the learning activity they are doing and is a great way to teach them more about the world around them.
Learning about the 5 senses and using all 5 senses for sensory play is especially important for picky eaters. After all, trying and learning to like new food is not all about how it tastes.
Sight: Kids see the food with their eyes and immediately make a decision about whether or not they are not going to even try the food.
Smell: If a food smells "different" or unexpected, kids might refuse to try it.
Touch: If a food feels odd in their hands or in their mouth, kids might not even give it a try before they taste it.
Hearing: Yes, even hearing has an effect on how our kids eat! Anything from hearing their siblings complain about not liking the food, to it being too crunchy sounding when the parents cut into the food.
Taste: Of course, how the food tastes has a huge impact on whether picky eaters will like the food.
And it's not just kids who judge food with all five senses, us adults do too.
This is why it's so important to incorporate sensory play that uses all five senses, so that kids are exposed to new sights, smells, textures, sounds, and flavors through fun and "safe" sensory play instead of being expected to eat a new strange food at the table, which can be so intimidating for kids.
This printable 5 senses activity is a great way to get kids involved in talking about their senses and talking about how different things feel, smell, sound, look, and taste. all without the pressure they feel when they sit down at the dinner table and have a new "nonpreferred" food on their plate.
I wanted to point out a page I love from this five senses worksheet: The Tasty Test on page 4. Use it as a template to do taste tests on new food! Make the activity info a fun game or experiment without any pressure to actually EAT the food.
There are several purposes to this activity:
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Some of the printables I have are activities for toddlers, helpful printouts for parents, and worksheets for overcoming picky eating. I'm sure there's something for everyone!
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