Exploring the Five Senses with Watermelon

I printed out my lesson plan for today, but I guess I didn't save it before my computer shut down . . . I guess that teaches me to hurry and copy and paste instead of waiting for later! Oh, well, typing twice may increase my skills. . .

Gathering - look at 5 senses books
song - Slippery Fish, using feather for slippery fish, talk about more describing words for feather (touch)
book - Shoo, Fly Guy! (talk about how fly guy uses all 5 senses to finally find his shoo fly pie)

Literacy - Tell kids we will be using our five senses to learn all we can about watermelons today, so we will be making squishy watermelon bags to practice writing our names.

Put hair gel and food coloring in ziploc bags, tape with packaging tape. (If you do this, don't make my rookie mistake - make sure and let the air out of the bag before closing.) Let kids squish colors together while I sing Willoughby Wallaby Woo. Write kids names on the back of bag backwards so that it shows through the other side. Demonstrate how to trace your name with your finger, encourage kids to say the letters out loud as they do the same. Later add green paper to the top for a watermelon rind.

Math - Start observing the watermelon using our five senses. How does it look? Cut it, and talk about how it looks inside, and how it smells. Ask the kids if they want to use their sense of taste. (Of course they did.) Tell them we want to give everybody two pieces, so how many will we need? (Note: I have rarely seen children so motivated to solve a math problem. They tried various ways of estimating and trying to solve, and finally I led them to counting hands. Great idea! Very enthusiastic counting. Once we figured out how many we needed, they counted again, several times, as I cut the watermelon.) If I'd had seeds (watermelon was seedless), we would have counted them, so note that for the future.

Snack - Watermelon, of course!

Science - Sing Five Senses song, point to Mr. Potato Head
Read "Me and My Senses"
Return to the watermelon, talk about each of the five senses again. Give children magnifying glasses to look at details of watermelon, and allow them to use their hands to dig into the watermelon. Prompt them to use descriptive words and ask questions about what they are observing.

Choosing time: Same as Tuesday, but instead of painting over names, use "rainbow" markers (wet erase) to trace names.

Note: I wanted to use the watermelon rinds to paint during choosing time, but most of the kids wanted to use the sensory salt shaker for another day, so I did not put out the watermelon rinds as an option.