Teaching the 5 Senses. “Let Them Eat Worms”

We have been eating worms and rocks- that’s right… GUMMY worms and POP rocks to explore our 5 senses!

This 5 Senses reading and writing unit will have them BEGGING for more. This unit has true skill level differentiation! Emergent readers are provided for the end of Kinder and start of first grade levels. Easy reading passages are provided for higher readers or to use mid to end of first grade. I am telling you, this pack has everything. Reading, writing, activities, and tests! You will love teaching it, and they will eat it up, literally! The activities have them eating and describing gummy worms, pop rocks, and so much more!

We have been having the time of our lives exploring our 5 senses. For the last 5 years running I have started my year with the 5 Senses because it is so interesting and concrete.

Interesting + Concrete = High Engagement & Success!

We have been doing the best activities, reading, and writing every day for the past 3 weeks. We ate worms…gummy worms of course!

We read little books that were heavy on sight words and sentence structure patterns.

5 Senses reading pack that will make them BEG to read. This pack has true differentiation. Emergent readers are provided for the end of Kinder and start of first grade levels. Easy reading passages are provided for higher readers or to use mid to end of first grade. I am telling you, this pack has everything. Reading, writing, activities, and tests!

We made Anchor Charts and wrote in our journals:

And we wrote some more…

The journals above are the ones I used at the start of the year in tandem with the easy readers. If I were teaching this unit later in the year, then I would have used the fluency reading pages and the Option 2 journal pages as seen below:

We “labeled” ourselves!

Label pictures to drive home the concept of 5 senses - great ideas from this blog

We sniffed and giggle and sneezed…

My higher students got to do fluency in guided reading.

They were crazy over the common core questions because they had multiple correct answers. My favorite is the question on sight: “You see a giant rock flying toward your face. What might your brain tell you to do?” Answers I got:

Scream so your mom can be there when the rock hits you.

Duck so the rock hits someone else.

My brain says move, but my feet are too slow. The rock hits me in the eye.

Speaking of rocks, we also ate rocks. Pop Rocks.

My teacher fed us rocks today and other great 5 senses activities and informational reading

I thought I was so cool thinking of the Pop Rocks idea about 8 years ago when I taught second grade and then I knew I was cool when Abby blogged about it last year. This told me two things: Abby and I share a brain (love it) and that teachers are the most creative bunch of people out there!

For each of the 5 senses you will find:

an Anchor Chart

a Little Book (Sight Word Reading)

an Activity

Word Work

Fluency Passage

Brainstorming or Smart Charts

Writing pages in 3 formats

and Assessment Options

It’s a big pack folks! Over 100 pages of sensory fun!

Tomorrow we are going to be taking one of these tests. I think I might let the kids decide which test they want to take!

Can you imagine how excited they will be to choose between three piles of tests? Can you imagine the horror when they realize they can’t cheat off of their neighbor because their papers don’t match!!! Ha-Ha I repeat, don’t cheat!

A big thank you goes to Nikki from Melonheadz for drawing the clip art I needed. Previously it was all my own drawings and DJ inkers bears. The DJ stuff was adorbs but my drawings were frightening!!! Thank God for Nikki !

Now this unit is easy on the eyes and my students grew into readers this first month of school. Even kids who could not read 10 sight words at the start of school were rocking this text upon their first reading attempt!!! I could have cried when my little foster child, who was a non-reader, read this book with joy and confidence! I.could.have.cried. (Maybe I did a little).

The kids love the interactive nature of the books. The taste book asks students if they like the food on that page, and then we tallied the class results. The parents have loved listening to their children read these books at home. I was able to send home a book every other day and used the word work pages in between. It definitely set up my year with the parents. “We are readers and writers and we love every minute of it!” This first few weeks has been a JOY partly because my class is adorable and partly because I had very engaging curriculum to spark their big beautiful brains!