 This is one way I like to teach my students how to make observations using their senses. I do my best as a teacher to get my students outside to enjoy some sunshine and fresh air to get their energy out in large movements. So what I like to do is send students on a scavenger hunt. A scavenger hunt is when children look for an object that fits a description I've given them. So I'll kneel down and have my students gather around me so they can all hear and see me and I'll give them a verbal direction. Please go and find me something that is small and smooth. And then I send them on their way and they know to stay where I can see them so I can make sure they are on task and safe. Pretty soon students come back to me and they'll bring me something like this. It is small and it is smooth. I will hold it in my hand and then I will give them back, give it back to them and I will ask them to describe it to me. They will tell me it is brown, it is so tiny and it is smooth. And I will say thank you for finding this tiny, small, smooth object. And they will run off and find something else. Pretty soon another student will come to me and maybe they have this. It is a rock and it is smooth. I will hold it in my hand and be so excited that they followed my directions and then I give it back to them so they can tell me about this object. And they'll use words like soft because it feels kind of soft, smooth and white. So I will be very excited again, remember always excited when a child follows your directions. And then after a while they'll all come back to me and I'll have a collection of small, smooth things. And I'll put it to the side and I'll give them a new direction. Please go find me something that sounds crunchy. And off they go and pretty soon somebody will come back to me with some dried up grass or some crunchy leaves and they'll take it to me and I'll have them crunch it for me and I'll listen. And I'll be very excited that they found what I needed. And then I'll put it to the side and we'll do this same activity with many different directions either until I run out of time to keep this activity going or they lose interest in this activity. And what's nice when we play scavenger hunt is we can also, if I want to, keep all the objects we found. Later on we could graph them on a chart by characteristic of big, small, smooth, rough or we could even just sort them into piles so that we can also know their characteristics by their senses. And if we really need more practice using our observations with senses we'll talk to each other and describe objects to our friends. This is one really engaging and a fun way for children to learn about observations and senses.