Exploring Food Using our Senses

Gather a collection of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Ask the children to explore the food using all their senses by asking them to smell, feel and touch their fruit and vegetables and to talk about what they are experiencing. Ask them questions specifically about each sense. What else is crunchy? What does the skin feel like? What does it sound like when you tap it with your finger? Is there anything else with a bumpy skin? Does its smell remind you of anything else?

Explain that they are going to make a small fruit and vegetable market so they need to set their market stall out clearly. Tell them  that they need to think of a way of sorting their fruit and vegetables. When they have identified a way of sorting their food, they write it on a sign for their stall (‘Soft and hard foods!’; ‘Get your shiny and bumpy food here!’, etc.). You may have  more than two groups of food, which is acceptable, but encourage them to think about opposites (soft/hard, bumpy/smooth

Ask : How did you decide to set your stall out like this? Did you have food that didn't fit your criteria? Why didn't they fit? Which groups were they better suited to? Are there other ways you could sort your food?

Include on their paper which sense they have used to identify the differences in their foods.

Decide which of the foods they would like to cut up and taste. Discuss the differences in taste, asking them questions like: Is this sweet? Is this sweeter than that one? Do you think this one will be sour? Which do you prefer and why? Ask them what sense they are using. Tell the children that taste is a sense and we use our tongues to taste things. (Remind them that we have to take care when tasting as some things can be bad for us. They can always check with an adult to be sure that something is safe.)

Ask them to identify those fruits and vegetables that could fit into more than one group. Ask them: Can you find a way of sorting them so that people coming to the stall can see that this food could be in both baskets? Give them two plates  and encourage them to think about overlapping them (Venn diagram).

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Understand that identifying things means looking at the differences between them.
• Know that classifying items means putting them into different groups.
• Be aware of the meaning of the scientific language: classify, identify, group, tongue and taste.
• Know that we taste with our tongues and that taste is one of our senses.
• To know that our senses help us to understand the world around us.
• To know that our senses can warn us of danger.
• To understand that our senses send messages to our brains.