Sensory Explorer

Explore the wild world around you

See, hear, touch, smell and taste!

This session is all about our senses and how we can use them to explore the natural world. During the activities we talk about our sight, hearing, smell and touch – we often tell children they can look forward to testing their fifth sense at snack/lunch/tea time!

Top tip: Enjoy watching your littles ones exploring but set some boundaries. Remind them not to put anything in their mouth and do also help them to look out for and learn about some of the wild plants which can be unpleasant to touch, like stinging nettles and thorns.

Before you start: Watch the video and then get together the following equipment for this session: paper, crayons, cardboard, scissors, felt tips and glue.

Video: Education Manager Vicky shares a few ideas for exploring with our senses, including a listening game to test our hearing and a simple craft for discovering textures through our sense of touch. You will need eagle eyesight to spot things for this game. What will you see, hear or feel?

Play a game

Touch three & then me!

• In this game the children have to touch three natural objects and then run back to you.
• Call out three things and send the children off to find them, starting with easy-to-find challenges such as touch a tree, the grass, something green and then me.
• Other ideas might include colours, textures, things older or younger than you, and shapes.

Who’s missing?!

This is a group game which tests powers of observation. Get started by asking all the children to run around.

• Shout: “Go to sleep!”
• The children must all curl up in a ball and close their eyes.
• Then cover up one child up with a blanket or remove a child from the group to hide.
• The remaining children then have to guess who is missing.