Sensational Senses
Explore how our five senses – taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing – help us to understand our world and solve problems around us.
The Big Idea: Our five senses – taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing – help us to understand our world and solve problems around us. Engaging our senses with hands-on experiences will provide a building block for future discoveries.
3 options available, appropriate for Pre-K – 1
VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP VIDEO RENTAL ($100): You will have 2-week access to a playlist of videos in English and Spanish, and you can break up our instructional and educational videos however you please. Videos may be shown or streamed only to classrooms at one school or site only.
Video package includes:
- Three recorded activities
- Creating a textured collage to explore our sense of touch
- Exploring items that are transparent, translucent, and opaque
- Solving a mystery using your 5 senses
- Three recorded informational videos
- Observe sounds made in the Museum’s Ravinia Festival Music Makers exhibit
- Match mystery smells in the Museum’s Play Cafe herb garden.
- Sort groceries in the Museum’s Whole Foods Market exhibit according to taste.
- Two recorded story times
- Activity instructions provided in English and Spanish to support learning at school and at home
ADD-ON SUPPLY KITS ($50): Why waste time and money collecting supplies? We’ll ship 30 individual kits of supplies to one location with materials needed for three of the recorded activities. (Kits sold in sets of 30 only.)
ADD-ON LIVE session ($50): Includes a 20-minute live presentation
for one classroom from a Museum educator with an activity exploring properties of light with shadow puppets. Please note, live presentation requires supply kits.
Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards
1.E.ECe With teacher assistance, use adjectives to describe people, places and things.
7.A.ECa Compare, order and describe objects according to a single attribute.
11.A.ECf Make meaning from experience and information by describing, talking and thinking about what happened during an investigation.
23.A Describe and explain the structure and functions of the human body and how they interrelate.
26.B.EC Use creative arts as an avenue for self-expression.
Common Core Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.K.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7 Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
Next Generation Science Standards
1-PS4-1 Plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that vibrating materials can make sound and that sound can make materials vibrate.
1-PS4-3 Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light.
2-PS1-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.