Celebrate your senses day: June 24

This is a great holiday to celebrate with kids. There are so many fun activites that you can do to explore and celebrate the five senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound in case  you forgot). You can do this at home, or you can do it somewhere fun, like the park, or the mall, or anywhere you happen to be.

First, you'll want to explain and demonstrate the five senses, especially if you have little kids. They may have never thought about the sensory information they receive, and it's fun to see them realize and notice something that they've never noticed before.

Of course there are tons of things that you can do to have fun with senses, but here a few ideas to get  you started. Take it and run with it.

• Touch: I like the blindfold game. Gather up some familiar and unfamiliar objects and put them in a closed container. One person is blindfolded and chooses something out of the bag. They then try to guess what it is by just touching it. It can be really fun.
• Taste: Make snack time extra fun and tasting with creepy, crawly snacks. For this tasty sensory activity you can make "bugs on a log" with a celery stick, peanut butter and raisins. Make some spider cookies with oreo cookies, black licorice for the legs, and red hots for the eyes. Use a bit of frosting to hold the eyes and legs in place. You can even make a caterpillar with slices of bananas, peanut butter, small pretzel sticks and raisins. Simply spread peanut butter on the banana slices and squish together to form the body. Place the pretzel sticks to create legs and plop on the raisins for the eyes. Make sure you have some salty and sweet, and different textures too.
• Sight: Try a reflection game. Find all the things in your house that can reflect an image like mirrors, spoons, metal pots, tin foil, windows, the tv. Have the kids look in each and describe the image of themselves (is it blurry, clear, long, short, upside down, etc.)
• Smell: A fun way to do smell would be to gather up different things in the yard and see how they smell, and try to describe it. Some things you smell may surprise you.
• Sound: This can be a nice relaxing activity. Have everyone lay down on the lawn, or on the floor and close their eyes. Listen for all the sounds you can hear: cars on the road, the refrigerator, water running, birds, your own breath.

Our senses are amazing, and taking time to focus on each one can be a great learning experience. It's also a great thing for adults. It will help you slow down a little, and really appreciate things around you more.

If you want to go outdoors for your activities, the park is a great place to try out your senses. Check out this link for a park near you in the Davis County Utah area. You can also go here for some more fun sensory games.