Students gain awareness of the five senses with brief, fun partner games that emphasize each sense. Set up a sensory station in your classroom with various challenges printed on slips of paper. Students explore a world without sight by wearing a blindfold and touring the classroom with a partner. Students experiment with sound by connecting two cans with a cord and using it to whisper messages to each other. Encourage investigations into the sense of touch by having a paper bag filled with different objects and having students guess what they are by feeling them. Children explore the sense of taste by placing grains of sugar and then salt on different parts of their tongues and reporting how the flavors change. Extend the activity by having students plug their noses while sampling the sugar and salt, demonstrating how the sense of smell or lack thereof affects the ability to taste.
Explore the concepts of water, volume and measurement with this small-group game. Young students enjoy this game because it involves authentic laboratory tools, or your best approximations of them. Split students up into groups of four. Ask them to make a prediction regarding how many drips of water it takes to fill the container you show them. Have students write down their predictions, or keep a record on the board. Give them each an eyedropper, or have each group share one eyedropper. Their goal is to take turns adding water drop by drop into a small beaker or test tube in a stand. As the water nears the top, have them use magnifying glasses to examine how the water responds when they add drops. They may notice splashing, how water magnifies objects or how careful dripping results in the water forming a lip and passing the top of the container before spilling. Ask students to report their observations to the class.
This game is an excellent opening activity for a longer unit on how objects float. Have students assemble various objects from around the classroom. Show each object and have them vote on whether or not it will float. Record their votes, or have a student recorders keep track. Place each object, one at a time, in the water to see if it floats. The student with the most correct guesses wins the game. Gather the class to draw conclusions about what floats and why, and then have students design boats made of art supplies or classroom materials to test in the water.
Introduce or reinforce concepts of force, motion and friction with a marble race. Student groups should design ramps for marbles. The ramps may consists of boxes, cardboard tubes, math manipulatives or other classroom materials that you determine as fair for use. Ask the groups to create a ramp that will make their marble travel the furthest across the classroom. Groups build their ramps at the starting line and test their results. The group with the marble that travels the furthest wins. Extend the game by setting new challenges such as creating a marble jump or making the marble stop at a predetermined spot.