Five Senses Lesson Plans for Early Childhood Education

Overview and Purpose

These two lesson plans are designed to introduce young children to the five senses — sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste — through hands-on activities and guided reading. Each lesson provides step-by-step instructions, required materials, SMART outcome objectives, accommodations for a student with epilepsy, and clear assessment benchmarks.

Lesson One: Exploring the Five Senses with Objects and Story

Adapted from Ken Baker Books Five Senses Lesson Plan.

Materials needed: an interesting photograph, a musical instrument, a piece of sandpaper, a soft piece of material, perfume, a piece of candy for each child, enough copies of the five senses handout for each child, and Brave Little Monster by Ken Baker.

This lesson helps children explore each of the five senses and label them correctly. The teacher picks up each object and explains how it relates to a specific sense, and how each sense works to tell us something about our world.

For example, the sense of sight tells us about everything we can see. The sense of hearing helps us distinguish sounds such as whispering, singing, and laughing. Touch helps us determine how things feel, including when something is wrong, such as pain, heat, or cold. Smell tells us about perfume, how our food tastes, and when a skunk is nearby. The sense of taste, caused by the taste buds, tells us how foods taste.

Next, the teacher reads the story Brave Little Monster aloud. As the story is read, children listen and identify moments when characters use one of the five senses. After the story, the class reviews how the different senses work and how they are used throughout the narrative. Connecting multisensory learning to a familiar story helps reinforce concept retention in early learners.

SMART Outcome and Assessment for Lesson One

SMART Outcome: The student will accomplish correct identification of the course content and will improve their listening and literacy skills.

Adaptations: The student with epilepsy may need to leave the room to take medication during the lesson. Because the core principles are repeated frequently, she should not miss critical content. The classroom lighting will need to be set at a frequency that does not trigger seizures; this should already be addressed by the school.

Assessment: Students should correctly identify the sense used in Brave Little Monster at least 3 out of 5 times.

Lesson Two: The Mystery Box Activity

Adapted from Paso Partners — The Five Senses, Lesson 1.

Materials needed: a hot air popper, a large box to cover the popper, popcorn, napkins, and cups for the popcorn.

This lesson introduces the topic of the five senses through a "mystery box" activity, along with reinforcement of concepts by reading See, Hear, Touch, Taste, Smell by Melvin Berger. The activity can be conducted as a whole-group exercise or in small groups, and is adapted here for a student with special needs.

Setup takes place while students are out of the room. The hot air popper is placed inside the mystery box. Students sit in front of the box, which is then turned on. The teacher asks students to use their senses to name what is inside. Guiding questions include: "What does it smell like? What does it look like?" Students then use touch and taste to explore the popcorn once it is revealed. They are asked to describe the experience using descriptive sensory words such as hard, soft, heavy, dark, bitter, yummy, loud, and sweet.

Following the activity, the class reviews the five sensory organs and discusses how each contributed to identifying the mystery object. The read-aloud of See, Hear, Touch, Taste, Smell reinforces the vocabulary and concepts introduced through the hands-on activity. Using real-world, edible materials like popcorn is a well-supported strategy in early childhood education for building engagement and concept retention.