Are you planning a five senses theme for your preschoolers? These hands-on sense of taste activities are a fun way to help children explore different tastes, flavours and foods across several areas of the preschool curriculum.
You’ll find ideas for:
- Sensory exploration and science
- Cooking and food preparation
- Literacy and language
- Early Maths and Graphing
Some children may be hesitant to try unfamiliar tastes and textures, so offer opportunities to explore without pressuring them to taste anything. In classroom settings, always check for food allergies and dietary restrictions beforehand.
Here are 15 simple sense of taste activities to add to your lesson plans, or to try at home with your preschooler.
Sensory Exploration & Science
Explore different tastes, flavours and textures through hands-on activities.
1. Taste Testing
Set up a fun taste-testing sensory station. Children wear blindfolds or close their eyes while you offer them small samples of foods to taste and guess.
You can do this with a theme, such as fruits, vegetables, or snacks. For younger children, you could show them the foods first, then have them guess the samples while blindfolded.
Keeping their eyes closed can be a challenge, but some kids don’t like wearing blindfolds or scarves over their eyes.
2. Explore the Five Basic Tastes
Offer small samples of foods representing the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savoury).
For example, try a piece of fruit for sweet, lemon for sour, a salted cracker for salty, unsweetened cocoa for bitter and Parmesan cheese for umami.
Let children taste each food and encourage them to describe and compare the flavours. Which tastes do they recognize, and which do they prefer?
3. Comparing Sugar and Salt
On dark-coloured surfaces or plates, offer each child a small amount of sugar and salt, side by side.
Talk about how they look, smell and feel: what is the same and what is different? To taste, the children can lick their finger and press it onto the sugar or salt, one at a time.
Talk about sweet and salty. Ask what kinds of foods they eat that are sweet or salty. Which are their favourites?
4. Fruit Exploration
Fruit can taste different depending on how it is prepared or served.
Offer children fruit in different forms to taste: whole, sliced or cut into chunks, with samples of the skin on its own.
When possible, have canned versions and dried versions of the same fruits to taste and compare.
For example, kids bite into a whole apple, sample slices or chunks of the apple, try some of the peel on its own, and also taste dried and canned apples. What do they observe?
5. Using All the Senses
Give each child a simple food, such as an apple slice or cracker, and explore it using all five senses.
Look at its colour and shape, smell it, feel its texture and listen to the sound it makes when you bite or break it. Finally, taste it and describe the flavour.
6. Edible Finger Painting
Offer 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.
Cooking & Food Preparation
Develop sensory awareness while preparing, handling and tasting food.
7. Cook Together
For a meal or snack, plan to cook or make something where children can take part in the activity.
Give them chances to smell, spoon, stir, slice, pour and spread. When the food is ready, taste it together and discuss the flavours: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and even umami.
Kids sometimes say that a certain food tastes “plain” or they mention textures, like “crunchy” or “mushy”, which is an important part of the eating experience.
Here are some simple cooking activities for kids.
8. Edible Playdough
You can find recipes online for many different types of edible playdough flavoured with items such as peanut butter, applesauce, marshmallows and soft drink mixes.
Find the recipe you think your children would enjoy the most and have them help mix it. As they manipulate and sample the playdough, urge them to talk about how it tastes.
Here’s a recipe for edible peanut butter playdough.
9. Build with Pretzels and Marshmallows
Offer children small pretzel sticks and marshmallows to taste separately. Talk about the different flavours – the salty pretzels and sweet marshmallows.
Then use the pretzels and marshmallows to build simple shapes and structures by connecting them together.
Afterwards, taste them together. How does combining a sweet and salty food change the taste?
Literacy & Language
Explore food, flavours and taste through stories, discussion and descriptive language.
10. Tony Baroni Loves Macaroni
Share the fun rhyming book by Marilyn Sadler called Tony Baroni Loves Macaroni.
Afterwards, you could offer various types of cooked pasta for kids to try. Children could also help make and taste one of the meals from the story.
11. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Share Eric Carle’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Then, pretending they are also “hungry caterpillars,” children can sample a few of the foods from the story, such as apples, pears, strawberries, oranges, cheese, watermelon or green leaves such as lettuce or spinach.
12. Yummy Yucky
Discuss how some things are not meant to be eaten, taste bad, or could even make us sick.
Share the humorous picture book on this topic called Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli.
Early Maths & Graphing
Compare, sort and graph children’s tastes and preferences.
13. Fruit Tasting & Graphing
Offer children small pieces of several different fruits, such as apple, banana, strawberry and orange. Taste each one and talk about its flavour and texture.
Ask children to vote for their favourite, then record the results on a simple class graph or chart.
Count the votes together and compare the results. Which fruit was the most popular? Which had the fewest votes?
14. Sort the Tastes
After tasting a selection of familiar foods, sort them into groups according to their tastes, such as sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami (savoury). Or, use pictures of the foods or their packaging to make the sorting activity easier.
Talk about where each food belongs and whether some foods could fit into more than one group.
15. Predict the Favourite
Show children three different foods and ask them to predict which one will be the class favourite. Record their predictions on a simple chart.
Let everyone taste the foods and vote for their favourite, then compare the results with the original predictions.
Were the children right? Which food received the most and fewest votes?
Explore more senses with these ideas: