Developing Studio Sprout curriculum feeds my creative bug and truly satisfies my soul. Sometimes I’ll get on a kick and jam out several months of fun themes and inspiring projects. The Five Senses has been simmering in the background for quite a while and I’m so glad to finally bring it into reality. So far so fun!!
We started off this five week session with an introduction to all five senses through Aliki’s fabulous book, My Five Senses. Aliki’s wonderful illustrations and simple but entertaining text made the concept of the five senses accessible to even my youngest students (18JM-2Y).
We first week focused on touch. Shaving cream play is hands down (no pun intended) the best touch sensory project I’ve ever done. It’s an oldie but goodie and something that I include in my project lineup a few times a year. This is a great activity for children to wear aprons and short sleeves so they feel uninhibited. While some children need no prompting or encouragement to touch their shaving cream others need support and time to ready themselves for this awesome sensory experience. If children are hesitant to dive in I supply them with a Popsicle stick so they can poke and prod with a tool before using their bare hands.
To maximize the smooth texture, offset the shaving cream from the table, and create easy clean-up, covering the table with tinfoil is a must. After each class is done with this project I squeegee the remaining shaving cream right into the garbage can.
Plastic droppers and liquid water color from Discount School Supply allow for a true mad scientist experience and support pincer grasp development.
Along with the awesome sensory experience, shaving cream play offers an opportunity for a beautiful art product, marbled paper. After dripping liquid water color over the top of the shaving cream mound, students stirred the paint slowly and gently with their Popsicle stick, stopping as the swirls appeared. It’s easy to over mix, and that is okay if a child is enjoying the process. For many students the magic is in the process.
Next students pressed paper into the shaving cream pile. We used white construction paper and card stock. The heavy weight coated card stock worked a little better but the construction paper held up quite well.
With the help from an adult students squeegeed off all the shaving cream to reveal and ultra cool marble print.
Each print is one of a kind and absolutely unique!
