Using your senses game ideas anyone?
Alright, this past summer when working at a summer camp I brought in a bunch of things thats the kids could either smell or touch and try to guess what it was. It worked out pretty well and took up a lot of time. When I did it I gave each itema difficulty because the children varied in age from 5-12. Now I am working at an afterschool program and I think I might suggest this to a group leader (I am only an assistant group leader and just got the job about a month ago). I am trying to show them that I can think of organzied games because it is better to keep the kids under control with planned activites. I was thinking about maybe making a game board out they can draw cards for which item they get to smell or touch and then they get to like roll a dice. However I don't know if this would be too hard with a group of say about 10-12 kids or so. Do you have any ideas/games that you have played? I was thinking about doing taste but its 4-6 year olds and dont wanna test food allergies
Public Comments
- I work at a children's museum designed for ages 10 and younger, and just a few weeks ago we had a Halloween event where we created a 5 Senses Station with simple little activities for each of the senses. This might be different than what you're looking for, but here's what we did: TASTE: We bought a number of different Jelly Bellys--including a few gross "Bertie Bott's" flavors (like dirt and soap and sardine)--and had the kids guess the flavors. This was a big hit, and we didn't have any allergy issues. SOUND: Kids could pick cards which told them to make specific sounds, and their friends could try to guess what sounds they were making. Also, we had a tuning fork set up so that they could see how vibrations create sound, and then try to use the vibration of the tuning fork to move a ping pong ball suspended by a string. SMELL: We purchased a game called "P.U., The Guessing Game of Smells" which contains about 50 different scratch-and-sniff cards (some good, some gross), and the kids sniffed and guessed in the same way as the taste station. There was another activity where we put actual foods such as cinnamon, cocoa, peppermint, and garlic into little vials that the kids could smell and guess. The foods never touched the kids, so again, no allergy concerns. SIGHT: A number of optical illusions and other sight games were set up, such as ones where a small section of an animal is shown (such as a few quills from a porcupine), and the kids have to guess what the animal is. There was also a spinning wheel that looked like one thing when stationary and another when spun around (such as a yellow-and-red striped pumpkin that looked orange when spun, and a spiral of itsy-bitsy spiders that looked like they were spiraling down toward the water spout when spun). TOUCH: Various "touch boxes" were set out on the table, where kids would reach in and guess what was inside without looking. For younger kids, there were little texture matching cards where they tried to match the texture on one card to the animal on another card ("bunny" to "furry", for instance). Lastly, the kids reached into a large box full of fake spider webs and tried to find little prizes that were hidden inside. If they could find one and pull it out, they could keep the prize. Hope this helps, or at least gives you some ideas!
