Introduce a variety of different textures and encourage your preschoolers to feel them. Put a piece of paper on sandpaper and allow the children to color the paper with crayons.
Gather such items as cotton balls, feathers, beads, shredded cardboard, felt, silk fabric, cut-up sponges, dry beans and play dough, and divide each item into two bowls. Set the bowls on the floor in a random order. Blindfold your students and let them feel the contents of each bowl. Discuss the ways things feel. Prompt the kids to use appropriate adjectives to describe what they feel. Give each child an opportunity to pair up the matching bowls. Ask how they made their decisions.
Encourage comparative thinking skills by giving each child a textured item and instructing her to find another item in the classroom with a similar texture.
Explore the classroom with magnifying glasses, then move outdoors. Try out binoculars, a microscope and a telescope. Look through binoculars made of toilet paper rolls with colored plastic wrap on the end. Play blindfolded Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
Make bubble art by filling a bowl with bubble mix and poking a hole in the top end of a straw. Set the straw in the bowl and allow each child to blow bubbles with it. Drop a dab of food coloring on the bubble, then pop it with a piece of paper to capture the swirling color.
Fill a bowl with milk and shake a drop of food coloring into the bowl. Let children take turns poking the surface of the milk with a toothpick and watching what happens.
Add 3 drops of essential oil to paint, then squirt glue into it. Mix the paint and create a shape on paper with several coats of paint. You could scent red paint with apple oil and orange with orange oil. Let the paint dry and allow the children to scratch and sniff the papers.
Fill film canisters with different smelly substances, such as strawberry milk powder, tuna fish, cloves, mint or pickle juice. Poke holes in the lids so you can smell the different scents. See whether the kids can guess the scents.
Give each child a card sprayed with a different scent and have them play hide and seek.
Play different kinds of music, then discuss beat patterns and how different music makes you feel or what it reminds you of. Dance to the beats in an expressive way; for instance, if polka seems silly to the kids, have them dance in a silly way. Play classical music for the class to paint to. Blindfold the kids and have them paint with bells glued on their paintbrushes. Fill glitter shakers with bells and use them as instruments.
Make lemonade as a class. Serve candy, potato chips and unsweetened cocoa on plates. Purchase unbreakable compact mirrors for each student. Have children look at their tongues in the mirrors. Explain what taste buds are and how they function. Ask each child to try an item from the plate, then describe what it tastes like. Pour everyone lemonade. Encourage the children to compare the flavors of the foods and lemonade.