Our five senses help us learn about the world every day. We use our eyes to see, ears to hear, nose to smell, tongue to taste, and skin to feel. These senses help us notice colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and touches.
Learning the five senses helps young children describe what they observe.
Key Facts
- Sight uses the eyes to notice color, shape, size, movement, and light.
- Hearing uses the ears to notice sounds, voices, music, and quiet or loud noises.
- Smell uses the nose to notice odors like flowers, food, smoke, or soap.
- Taste uses the tongue to notice flavors such as sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.
- Touch uses the skin to notice temperature, texture, pressure, and pain.
- The brain receives messages from the senses and helps us understand what is around us.
Vocabulary
- Sense
- A sense is a way the body gathers information about the world.
- Sight
- Sight is the sense that lets us see things with our eyes.
- Hearing
- Hearing is the sense that lets us notice sounds with our ears.
- Smell
- Smell is the sense that lets us notice odors with our nose.
- Touch
- Touch is the sense that lets us feel things with our skin.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Saying the eyes help us hear is wrong because eyes are for sight and ears are for hearing.
- Forgetting that skin is a sense organ is wrong because skin helps us feel hot, cold, soft, rough, and pain.
- Thinking the tongue only tastes sweet is wrong because the tongue can sense many flavors, including sour, salty, bitter, and umami.
- Using only one sense to describe an object can miss important details because objects can have a color, sound, smell, taste, and texture.
Practice Questions
- 1 A child sees 3 red balls and 2 blue balls. How many balls does the child see in all, and which sense is being used?
- 2 In a classroom, a child hears 4 claps, 1 bell, and 5 drum taps. How many sounds does the child hear in all, and which body part is used?
- 3 A cookie looks round, smells sweet, feels warm, and tastes sugary. Name the senses used to learn about the cookie and explain what each sense tells you.