We continued our study of the five senses today using the book What If You Had Animal Eyes!? By Sandra Markle and illustrated by Howard McWilliam.
Today’s read-aloud book inspired a lot of messy activities. We moved outside for most of them to allow the creativity to fly!
Science Activities that relate to the Sense of Sight
Senses observation chart
Before reading the book, we paused to talk about senses, especially the sense of sight and how it helps. For the title, I wrote- “Is the sense of sight the same for ALL animals?. Then, we brainstormed things we know about animal eyes. I glued six example animals found in the book to the chart and then asked kids to look closely at the pictures and give some observations they made. I wrote down some ideas they came up with and then began reading the book. We then paused and added more to the chart of facts we found most exciting or ones that changed our ideas about the sense of sight.
Which is Which Sight Test
I filled three separate trays with corn starch, powdered sugar, and shaving cream and mixed each with water. I hid small items in each tray and had kids try using ONLY their sense of sight to identify what was hidden and what material each tray contained. Then let them get messy finding all the items, cleaning the trays, and start dialogue discussing the sense of touch and how it helped with our sight for this activity. The kids spent a large portion of time playing with the cornstarch tray and adding more and more water to change the oobleck texture.
Blindfolded Guess Items
I grabbed four items of the same color and presented them one at a time after the child was blindfolded and had them guess what they might be holding. After their guesses, I let them see the item and talk about how they made the prediction, and if they were wrong, I spoke about characteristics from the sense of touch and sound that might help them guess next time.
Test of Sight: Rainbow Exploration
I used a large container of water, shaving cream, and a muffin tin filled with paint in all the rainbow colors. I gave the kids pipettes to pick up the watery paint and squirt it into the shaving cream/ water container. They watched as the colors splashed, mixed, and changed. We also hid animals in the bottom of the container when we did this before, and the kids loved having to try and find items under all the color explosions. I’ll update with a post about our Kaboom! day to celebrate the book Fluffy McWhiskers that we are OBSESSED with!
Please visit my Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s page for more resources that included these activities.
Focus Questions for Before, During, and After Reading Aloud of What If You Had Animal Eyes!?
- How can you see things?
- What are some ways animals use their sense of sight?
- How can those eyes help that animal?
- Which animal eyes would you want to have? Why?
- How are those animal eyes similar or different from your eyes?
I used a chart to jot down ideas as kids came up with good thoughts. If children were older, this would be a great book to stop and jot down ideas in their journals or draw observations to share with buddies.
Reading & Writing Follow-Up Activities
Draw & write for the prompt: Which eyes would you choose? Then, the kids could draw and write about the animal they selected and use the book or videos for ideas.
Find the clue- CVC word invisible clue: I used glue and markers to make a word hidden on card stock paper. Then I hid the paper around the room. When they found the card, they had to read the CVC word aloud and try and find the item named, i.e., hat.
Hidden Messages: We used a black light marker to write notes to each other in a journal. Then we had to find the letter and send back a new note to our partner.
Art Crafts That Relate to animals in What If You Had Animal Eyes!?
- Dragonfly Puppet: See image for more details, we added different layers to this activity to add more detail. It was created using a paper bag, paint sticks, cellophane paper, popsicle sticks, and glue.
- Chameleon sponge art
- Chameleon Fruit Loop creation
- Invisible Art: Create a design using glue. Then after it dries paint over it with watercolor or Do-A-Dot paint.
Our Favorite Educational Videos about Sense of Sight related to What If You Had Animal Eyes!?
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Thank you so much for reading this post. For more ideas about the senses or making learning literacy fun for young learners, please click on my other posts below- Chrissy
