20 Easy Five Senses Activities for Preschoolers
Are you planning a five senses theme for your preschoolers? This collection of hands-on five senses activities helps children explore sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste through play-based learning experiences across the preschool curriculum.
You'll find a mixture of:
- Sensory play
- Art and creative activities
- Literacy and language
- Early maths
- Music and movement
- Games and imaginative play
The activities are organised by sense, so you can easily find simple ideas for each sense.
Sense of Sight Activities
Explore colour, light and visual perception with these simple sense of sight activities.
1. Light & Shadow Exploration
Teach simple science concepts by playing with light and shadows. Shine a torch or flashlight onto different objects and experiment with moving the light closer, farther away and into different positions to see how the shadows change.
2. I Spy
Play a game of I Spy to build visual perception. Choose an object that everyone can see and give clues based on its colour, shape, size or position for children to guess.
Here are some I Spy examples to try.
3. Colour Hunt
Challenge children to find objects of a particular colour around the classroom or outdoors. Then compare the different shades, or sort them into light and dark, or from lightest to darkest.
4. Colour Mixing
Try a simple process art activity by offering paints in the three primary colours and allowing children to mix them to form the secondary colours.
You could also offer white and black paint to experiment with making colours lighter or darker, such as mixing red and white to make pink.
See the full collection of sense of sight activities for more details and activity ideas.
Sense of Hearing Activities
Explore sound, rhythm and listening skills with these simple sense of hearing activities.
5. Listening Walk
A listening walk is a wonderful way to spend some time in nature and practise listening skills. Encourage children to describe the sounds they hear, especially when they cannot see what is making them.
6. Science of Sound
Teach children that sounds are made by vibrations. Have them gently place their fingers on their throats while humming, singing or changing the pitch, and have them notice how the vibrations feel.
Follow up with Sounds All Around: The Science of How Sound Works by Susan Hughes. You can watch the read-aloud below.
7. Copy the Rhythm
Clap or beat out a simple rhythm pattern and challenge children to listen carefully and copy it.
The kids can then take turns being “the leader” for the other kids to copy.
8. Dance to the Beat
For this music and movement activity, play different pieces of music and encourage children to listen carefully to the beat and mood, and to dance or move accordingly.
They could march, tiptoe, stomp, sway, jump, spin or clap, moving fast, slowly, energetically, gently or sleepily.
See the full collection of sense of hearing activities for more details and activity ideas.
Sense of Touch Activities
Discover different textures, temperatures and sensations with these simple sense of touch activities.
9. Touch & Feel Box
Place several familiar objects inside a box or bag. Have children reach in and identify an object using only their sense of touch, describing how it feels with words such as soft, hard, smooth, rough or bumpy.
10. Hot, Warm & Cold Water Exploration
Fill three bowls with cold, lukewarm and comfortably warm water and have children compare how they feel.
Add ice cubes to the warm water and notice how the temperature changes, or place one hand in cold water and one in warm water before putting both into the lukewarm bowl. Does it feel the same to both hands?
11. Draw & Guess Game
Try this simple sensory game by drawing a shape, letter or simple picture on a child’s back with your finger and having them guess what it is by feeling the movements. Children can also take turns being the drawer and guesser.
12. Touch & Feel Collage
Offer a variety of textured materials for children to feel and glue onto sturdy paper or poster board to create a tactile collage.
Pair the activity with the picture book Lucy’s Picture by Nicola Moon. You can watch the read-aloud below.
See the full collection of sense of touch activities for more details and activity ideas.
Sense of Smell Activities
Investigate different scents through sensory play, nature and creative activities with these simple sense of smell ideas.
13. Scented Sensory Play
Create a scented water sensory bin using natural materials such as lemon or orange slices, citrus peel, fresh herbs and cinnamon sticks.
Add cups, spoons and small containers for scooping, pouring and mixing. Encourage children to smell the different ingredients and notice how the scents combine as they play.
14. Go on a Smell Walk
Take children on a walk around the garden, school grounds or neighbourhood and focus on the different scents they notice. Stop to smell safe items such as flowers, herbs, grass or leaves, and encourage children to describe and compare the smells.
15. Smelly Collage
Have children create a collage by gluing a variety of naturally scented materials, such as fresh or dried herbs, spices, coffee, dried citrus peel and flower petals. Encourage them to describe and compare the different smells as they work.
16. Fruit Tea Bag Painting
Try a scented process art activity with fruit-flavoured herbal tea bags. Have children smell the different scents, then arrange the tea bags on heavy paper and spray them with water, watching the colours spread as they move and squeeze the bags around the paper.
See the full collection of sense of smell activities for more details and activity ideas.
Sense of Taste Activities
Investigate different tastes and foods through sensory play, art and early maths with these simple sense of taste activities.
17. Explore the Five Basic Tastes
Offer small samples of foods representing the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savoury). Try examples such as fruit, lemon, a salted cracker, unsweetened cocoa and Parmesan cheese, and encourage children to taste and compare the different flavours.
18. Edible Finger Painting
Have some sensory fun by offering kids pudding, flavoured yoghurt or smooth baby food to finger paint with washed hands on a clean table or tray. They can taste the "paints" while they work and discuss the flavours they experience.
19. Fruit Tasting & Graphing
Bring some early maths into your five senses theme with a simple fruit taste test. Offer several fruits to taste, then have children vote for their favourite and record the results on a class graph. Count and compare the votes to find the most and least popular fruits.
20. Build with Pretzels and Marshmallows
Taste salty pretzels and sweet marshmallows separately, then use them to build simple shapes and structures. Afterwards, taste them together and talk about how the flavours change when combined.
See the full collection of sense of taste activities for more details and activity ideas.
Teaching the five senses doesn't need to be complicated. Simple, hands-on experiences that encourage children to notice, compare and describe what they see, hear, touch, smell and taste can be incorporated into many areas of the preschool curriculum.
Looking for more theme ideas? Here's a full list of preschool themes to help plan your activities.
