Five Senses Lesson Plans for Early Childhood Education
This paper presents two sequential lesson plans designed to introduce young children to the five senses. The first lesson uses tangible objects — such as sandpaper, perfume, and candy — alongside the picture book Brave Little Monster to help students identify and label each sense. The second lesson employs a "mystery box" containing a hot air popcorn popper to engage students in hands-on sensory exploration, reinforced by a second read-aloud. Both plans include SMART learning outcomes, assessment benchmarks, and specific adaptations for a student with epilepsy, addressing medication schedules and classroom lighting considerations.
- Overview and Purpose: Introduction to both five senses lessons
- Lesson One: Exploring the Five Senses with Objects and Story: Objects and picture book to teach senses
- SMART Outcome and Assessment for Lesson One: Goals, adaptations, and benchmarks for lesson one
- Lesson Two: The Mystery Box Activity: Popcorn mystery box hands-on sensory activity
- SMART Outcome and Assessment for Lesson Two: Goals, adaptations, and benchmarks for lesson two
- References: Sources cited for both lesson plans
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What makes this paper effective
- Each lesson follows a clear, consistent structure — materials, procedure, SMART outcome, adaptations, and assessment — making it easy to replicate in a real classroom setting.
- The plans incorporate multiple modalities (tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and visual), which reinforces the very content being taught through experiential learning.
- Specific, measurable assessment criteria (e.g., "correctly 3 out of 5 times") demonstrate awareness of performance-based evaluation appropriate to early learners.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the use of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) outcome objectives within an instructional design framework. Rather than stating vague goals, each lesson articulates precise benchmarks for student performance, showing how lesson planning at the early childhood level can be grounded in evidence-based instructional design principles.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into two parallel lesson plan units. Each unit contains a materials list, a step-by-step instructional procedure adapted from an external source, a SMART outcome statement, an adaptations section addressing a student with epilepsy, and a quantified assessment rubric. The parallel structure makes the two lessons easy to compare and signals intentional curriculum sequencing from concept introduction to hands-on exploration.
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.
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