Senses: Taste

I introduced our Taste theme at snack time. I blindfolded the kids and had them taste things to see if they could tell me what it was. I wanted them to be happy to participate and willing to try things, so I did not throw in anything gross or surprising, and with having some picky kids in our class, that was tricky. :)

I had them try two different drinks and two different foods.

I found the following idea out of an LDS (Mormon) 3 year old Sunday School Manual. The lessons are very simple and teach about simple concepts like senses, animals, etc. I love this manual as a great resource. This is my faith, but it could easily be used by an Christian faith, as they are all based on God giving us the gift of different things we have like families, animals, our bodies, etc. And if you are not Christian, you can easily leave those parts out. 

Here is a link to the lesson: LDS Sunbeams: Sense of Taste

and also a link to the manual's table of contents, Primary 1: I Am a Child of God, so that you can see all the great lessons they have.

Anyhow, I tried to present a food from each taste group, sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. I did give the kids the option to taste it, and some did not want to. Then I presented things that look similar but don't taste the same like sugar and salt. Then we talked about how things look vs how they taste. I showed them how some cleaners can look like juice. So we talked about food safety, and not trying things that you find without talking to a parent, etc first. 

For art we painted with edible paints. I had been struggling with an art idea for taste that would work, and one of my friend's suggested edible paint. I thought it was a great idea! So I made a large batch of instant vanilla pudding and added coloring to it. I flavored a few colors with flavors I had on hand, lemon and raspberry. And then I made a batch of chocolate too. I gave each child their own plate with all the colors and flavors. And then gave them cardstock as it is a little thicker to paint on. It wasn't the best paint medium, but they had a lot of finger licking fun. :) 

I had plans to do this cute art project, but I think we ran out of time. I found it at Preschool Education. 

5 spices, paper, glue. Directions: You need 5 spices. Anything that has a strong texture and smell. Draw on a sheet of paper the outline of a spice holder. Have children smell the spices taste them and sprinkle them on to glue on the paper to make a spice rack.   

Our last art project I found at Everything Preschool. 

Art: My favorite food collage. Supply each child with a paper plate. Allow the children to look through old magazines and cut out pictures of their favorite foods to glue on their plates. You can even laminate the plates and use them as place mats at lunch time! Have the children show their pictures and tell what their favorite foods are. 

This didn't work as well as I had hoped.  I think it would work better with kids that are 4-5 or older. The bored quickly and had a hard time finding foods they liked. But it was still a cute art project.