Sense of Taste and Touch

TASTE and TOUCH are the senses we explored during circle time as a follow up to what we were talking with Vieda on Wednesday.  Actually, we used all our five senses and allowed our brains to work very hard as some of us made pumpkin cupcakes and how we all loved the tasting part when they were baked!  Yummy yum yum :9   

We started our circle time playing a Japanese hand game called Gu Choki Pa De Nani Tsukuro; using rock, scissors and paper hands we made different shapes.  For example, K made a crab with two scissors, E made bunny ears with two paper hands and K made a snail with a rock and scissors.  We also read a Japanese book about a dog called Ponte smelling through the Autumn leaves and finding his favorite smell.  Guess what it was?  S guessed, “lunch” but you know what?  It  was a smelly sock! 

Nanako: How do we say Summer in Japanese?

J: Hare.  (It actually means ‘sunny’ in Japanese and perhaps some friends associated ‘sunny days’ to Summer.)

A: Natsu.

Nanako: What’s the season after Summer?

M: Autumn.    

E: Aki.

We then talked about the three senses we talked about on Wednesday with Vieda:  SMELL, SIGHT and HEARING.  Today, with a partner, each pair got a little box with something inside.  We helped each other to find out what was inside.  Some friends didn’t want to try it out and other friends were very brave and had such high functioning taste buds!  Here are what all our friends guessed and in brackets are the answers.

 Y & L:  Goma/sesame seeds.  [Sesame seeds]

E & W: Salt.  [salt]

K & S: Peanut or curry.  [Cinnamon]

E & M: Black tea.  [Black tea]

R & R: Sugar. [Sugar]

E & J: Tree salad.  [Parsley]

A & M: Pepper. [Peppermint]

K & A: Spicy.  [Ginger]

B & B: Coffee bottle. [Coffee bean power]

R & T: Seed. [Oats]

Well done everyone!  Some of us were familiar with the taste,  for others, their brains had to work harder, associating with the taste we already know and figuring out the new taste in our mouth.  Our next task was to test our sense of touch.  Now this one was a little harder than we had expected.  There were six slates each with different texture.  We wanted to reorder the slates in the order from smooth to rough.  B explained that smooth means “soft” like sponge , skin , clothes or frame whereas, rough means “feels ouchy” as R explained or “hard” as B explained like rocks , sandpit or wall paper.  Knowing what it means for something to be smooth or rough is one thing but it was another thing, feeling the difference on the slate—how challenging it was! 

 Seeing that we were struggling a bit with the task, Nanako asked, “Do you want to touch something very smooth?”  Of course, we all answered YES!  There was a black cover over something and we guessed that Nanako was hiding a chair underneath.  Were we touching the smooth surface of a chair?  “Abracadabra!”  We chanted three times and what did we see under the cover?  There was a bunny.  Nanako used to have a rabbit called Pyon-chan and sadly during the Fall break, she had died.  She was seven years old.  The new bunny is three-month old and is called Cinnamon.  We all had a chance to pat her and feel her smooth, soft fur :)  Now we know at least what smooth feels like!

 At the park, we discovered that there is smooth and rough surface on the big slide!

Thank you for another lovely day!

Love from the children in Flowers.