Engage Your Senses

Our sense organs (the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin) take in information everyday from the world around us.  It’s important to have these organs working correctly for us!  Making sure they are taking in an accurate picture of reality.

Taking time to notice how attuned your senses are can benefit you in understanding which sense/s might need some attention.

Here are some fun experiments that will assist you to give attention to your senses.  They can be modified  to do alone or with your friends.  Or if you’re a parent, you can arrange them for your children.

TASTE

⇢Eat or drink slower than you normally do.  Savor a sip or bite, identify what flavor you taste. Is it sweet, salty, bitter, sour or umami? Can you pick out individual ingredients, maybe an herb or a spice? 

⇢Put together a taste test for friends or kids.

• Coffee (different brands or different methods of brewing)

• Cheeses

• Breads

• Protein Bars

• Alternative Milk (oat, almond, rice, coconut, soy)

• Water (various brands)

• Potato Chips (Lays, Kettle, Pringles)

• Steak (same cut, different butchers or stores)

TOUCH

⇢Get 5 to 10 different grades (roughness) of sandpaper. The degree of roughness should be printed on the back. Cut the sandpaper into pieces about 3” x 3”. 

Write down the grade of roughness on the back of each cut piece. Mixup the pieces of and place them with the rough side up. 

Use a blindfold or close your eyes.

Using your finger, line up the pieces of sandpaper in order...from the smoothest to the roughest. Then see how you did!

⇢What’s in the box?

A game that is actually sold on Amazon, but you can make your own.  Cut the top of a box off. (This will be the entry point to place objects in.)  Cut arm holes on the sides.  This allows the person currently playing to be facing the closed end of the box and put their arms through the sides.  You will have placed an object for them feel and guess what it is through the open end.  (Do an online search of ‘What’s In the Box’ and you can get a great visual with videos and blogs a plenty.)

SMELL

⇢If you pass flowers, stop and smell them. 

⇢Take time to smell your food before you eat it.  In actuality, the eating experience is not just a ‘tasting’ experience. It’s a ‘smelling’ experience as well.  The two go hand in hand.  To make this point, try an old-fashioned taste-test as a mini-science experiment. Blindfold your participant and have them plug their nose, then see if they can taste the difference between foods with similar textures.

Here are a few suggestions:

apples / raw potatoes 

Pepsi / Coke

Banana yogurt / strawberry yogurt

Red gummy bear / blue gummy bear

Keep track of their guesses as you go. 

Then have them take a stab at identifying the flavors simply by smelling them. 

Which was easier? Did they get more right by taste or by smell? How does our ability to smell things affect our ability to taste them? 

⇢Hide and Smell

Spray a washable object, like a clean sock or towel, with a strong scent (perfume or room deodorizer works well). Hide the sock or towel in the room or house—and see how long it takes your participant to find it by using their nose as a guide. 

⇢Scent Scrapbook

Studies have shown that your sense of smell can enhance your working memory and evoke long-ago experiences.  Play up that memory power by creating a scent scrapbook. Think of the smells that remind you of happy times and beloved people.  Then, use a small notebook to create your own scratch-and-sniff scrapbook by spritzing on a perfume or essential oil, gluing on bits of spice, or attaching plastic bags with small bits of the item (like a handful of backyard dirt). After a bad day, inhaling some of these ‘happy’ smells can instantly boost your mood.

SIGHT

⇢Two words:

Where’s Waldo?

Great idea to hone your visual skills. 

Once you find Waldo, look around the picture for anything else that is interesting. See the details.

⇢Look at colors more closely.  

How many shades of green do you see in a tree or a leaf?

⇢Go to a window, look out, what is the closest object you can see?  What is the furthest object you can see? What are the brightest and darkest colors you can see?

⇢Stroop Effect

Search online ‘stroop effect images’.  You will get a clear picture of the description to follow. It's most commonly observed when someone has difficulty naming the color of ink when it's used to spell the name of a different color. For example, it's easier to recognize the color of the word "GREEN" when it's written in green, but more difficult when it's written in purple.  Look at some of the images you found online and give it whirl!

HEAR

⇢If you are on a busy city street, listen for birds singing.

If you hear an energy source buzzing, detect what direction it’s coming from? 

If you are in a room with others, what do you hear?

One persons voice above others? Laughter? Breathing? 

⇢When listening to music - isolate base, piano, drums, guitar, ect.