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Five Senses Interactive Games

Children learn from their earliest beginnings with their five senses. Hearing, smelling, tasting and touching all begin the learning process, even before seeing. The more of the senses that are used in a game, the more of an impact it will have on the children playing. Memories are developed by smells, tastes and sounds, in addition to sight and touch. Interactive games that incorporate all five senses will encompass a child's learning experience.
  1. Sight

    • Interactive sight games can range from Blind Man's Bluff, which takes a child's sight away with the use of a blindfold and forces the child to depend on his other sense as he listens for noises and smells from other children, to I See I See, an old children's game focusing on being aware of the colors around you. The "It" player will choose a visible object of a certain color and announce it to the group with the chant, "I see, I see something blue." The other children have to look around and guess which object has that color. Children have the opportunity to interact with each other and learn awareness of the value of their sight.

    Sound

    • An interactive sound game is to let each child randomly choose the name of an animal from a bag of paper slips that already have the animal names printed on them. Prepare the slips to have several of the same animal names. Next, have them walk around making the animal noise until everyone with the same animal is grouped together. Another sound game is to play musical notes, songs or instruments and let the children guess what is being played.

    Taste

    • Tasting games can go way beyond simply identifying tasty objects. A relay game can be set up with two or more teams. Each member runs to a plain brown paper bag and grabs an object out of the bag to eat before he runs back to the starting place. Avoid foods that could cause choking and make sure the child shows you her mouth is empty before she runs back.

    Smells

    • Let children interact with books they are reading by playing the part of characters involved and tasting and smelling key components of the book. Let the children smell and taste a cookie while reading "When You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Felicia Bond. Children can easily play games that when blindfolded ask them to identify objects by their smells. Let children interact with science games by smelling the ingredients of a cake, such as flour, sugar, eggs and baking powder, and then realizing how different the smell is when it is all put together and baked.

    Touch

    • Play an interactive story game with objects the children feel in a bag and identify with only their touch. Let them make up an imaginative story about the objects. Partway through the story have the children stop and take an object from the bag to see what it really is. The children should keep passing the bag around, with each child continuing the story.

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