Young children learn best through exploring their senses. First they may see something new, using their sense of sight. Then they will want to reach out and touch it – their sense of touch. They will shake it, to discover if it makes a sound – their sense of hearing. Then they bring it close to their face, and will smell and taste it, using two more senses. This is the way infants, toddlers, and preschool children learn. Once children learn how to read, then they may learn by reading about something, but it is still best whenever practical, to involve two or more senses in the learning process. You can help your young child by teaching him about his five senses, and giving him lots of experiences to use those senses.
Children use their sense of sight all the time. You can help them to learn the vocabulary to describe what they are seeing. Whenever you have a moment to talk with him, ask him to describe how something looks. You can play word games with him, like “I spy” and “I’m thinking of something”. Play the card game Memory – looking for matched pairs of things. Teach him to recognize colors – but go beyond the basic eight crayola colors! Teach him to notice different shades of red, like crimson, rose, burgundy and salmon. Help him to see the differences between two similar objects. This is an important skill, as the letters d, p, q, and b are all very similar indeed!
Lots of parents complain that their child has selective hearing. When he’s busy playing, you can tell him a dozen times that it’s time to wash up for dinner and he won’t hear you. But whisper to your spouse that there’s ice cream for desert, and your little child is suddenly jumping up and down and asking you for a bowl right now!
There are some studies which may indicate that listening to classical music can actually raise your child’s I.Q. This is known as the Mozart Effect, if you’d like to read more about it. I’m not sure if the results of the study are even important. You certainly can’t harm your child by playing classical music for him, so go ahead and give it a try!
You can play various listening games to help your child develop his sense of hearing. Classic games like “Simon Says” and “Mother May I” require attentive listening. There are new lotto games available that has the child listening to various common sounds – like a sheep baaing, a cow mooing, or a man snoring – and then cover that picture on his playing board.
Every meal can be an exercise using the sense of taste. Be careful when serving casseroles and salads – most young children prefer their food separated. They may eat carrots, corn, and beef, but not an entree with carrots, corn and beef in it. They don’t generally like sauces and gravies. It’s best to serve them simple basic foods, cut in small chunks to make it easier to chew and to prevent choking. Don’t get them addicted to ketchup, which is high in sugar and low in nutrition. Let them learn to eat their foods plain. They will thank you when they grow up.
Don’t forget to teach your child when it’s NOT appropriate to taste something! If you garden, you need to teach him that some parts of some plants are not good to eat. Don’t let him eat mushrooms he’s picked in the yard, or chow down on crickets (yuck!) whether they’ve been sprayed with insecticide or not! (Okay, my youngest ate a lot of crickets in her toddler years).
The sense of smell is often the poorest developed sense. Most children’s toys have no real smell. Sometimes picture books or stickers may have a “scratch and sniff” feature, but it quickly wears out. Some things are not safe to smell, like ammonia or bleach. But you can still help your child develop this sense. Again, at every meal, ask him to smell the food and describe what it smells like. When you’re baking a savory roast, help him to identify that scent. When you wash his hair with lavender shampoo, help him to identify that scent. Let him smell your perfume, or an onion when you are slicing it. You can even make a smelling game. Collect a dozen small uniform containers, like empty plastic film cans. Then put six pairs of different scents into the containers. Cover the top with gauze, so the child cannot see what’s inside, but can smell it. Have him sniff each can, and match them up accordingly. You could put a pair of cotton balls sprayed with perfume in two, a pair of onion slices in two more, and so forth. This game will eventually lose it’s potency, but the ingredients are cheap enough that you can refresh it periodically.
Finally, we come to the sense of touch. This can be a lot of fun for both you and your child. I just love to touch things! When I shop for clothes, I usually shop with my hands before I use my eyes. (My wardrobe probably reflects that!) Something has to feel right, before I’ll consider trying it on. I’m allergic to latex, and I really don’t care for clingy knits. I love pure cotton, silk, and wool. Hate synthetics, except for synthetic fur. Now all my kids and even my three-year-old granddaughter shop with their hands outstretched!
You might put a tray of different objects out for your child to touch. One day you might do “prickly” and put out a whole pineapple, a brush curler, a pine cone, pine needles, hair brushes, etc. Let your child touch them, play with them, and describe them to you. Help him to learn new words to describe them. Then a few days later, repeat this activity with “soft” things, like cotton balls, fur scraps, velvet, a feather.
And last of all, you should have a “sensory table”. In a Day Care Center, this might be referred to as a Sand/Water Play table, but you can put so much more than sand or water in it. In fact, there are so many activities to do with this, that I will put it in another post.
Teaching your preschooler doesn’t have to be hard, or expensive. It means just being there, and being alert for the teachable moments in his life.
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For Further Reading:
Sight
Sound
Touch
Taste
When was the last time you were stuck in traffic with your toddler or preschool child, when he just did not want to be in his car seat any more? Maybe you had a head-ache, or weren’t feeling great yourself. Maybe it was getting hot inside, and the air conditioner wasn’t working properly. Or maybe the opposite was true – it was the middle of winter and the windows were too foggy to see out of? Nearly all of us can recall at least one time when we were sorry the automobile was ever invented. 
Get a toy that has moving parts attached to a bigger part. Sometimes a smaller version of the tracking toy will work – the wooden beads on a curved metal bar that you push around. They aren’t that much fun compared to how much they cost, but if someone gave you one, you can keep it in the car. Another good car toy are lacing cards. You can buy them or make them yourself. Cut out a variety of shapes from bright colored cardboard and punch holes around the edge. The child then “sews” it up with a shoe lace. This is great small-motor control practice, developing finger dexterity that is so necessary before learning to hold a pencil and write. When your child graduates beyond lacing cards, then get plain plastic canvas, strings of yarn and blunt-tipped darning needles. You’d be amazed at what your child can create!
Fourth: your imagination. Your child really just wants your attention. Most temper tantrums are attention-getters, even if the attention they get – in the form of discipline – is not the kind of attention they really wanted. When your toddler or preschooler is getting fractious and the toys aren’t working, the snacks are gone, and you still can’t just return home, then it’s time to play a game. This can be really challenging if you are also driving! Be very, very careful! But especially if someone else is in the car with you, engage your child in any sort of “look out the window and what do you see” game. You can play “look for something red!” or “count the cows”. Or “find an airplane”. Older preschoolers can play games involving the alphabet – finding certain letters of the alphabet on the billboards. We used to play that you had to find an A, then a B, and so forth – the first one to get to Z wins! I can remember always getting stuck on “Q” until I learned to read and could spot a liquor store at a hundred paces. But if your preschooler is too young to find all the letters of the alphabet, just find the letters that are in his name. Or if you’re doing the lesson plans, you can just look for the letter of the week.
