SENSORY EXPERIENCES

1. Chapter 8 SENSORY EXPERIENCES

2. Objectives • After reading this chapter, you should be able to: • Discuss the relationship among sensing, perceiving, feeling, thinking, and concept development. • List and briefly explain the different senses. • Develop a multi-sensory learning activity for young children. • Identify three major learning styles and select the one(s) that best describe the way you learn. • Discuss the relationship between learning style and teaching style. • Provide a rationale for including field trips in an early childhood program. • Provide art activities based on the process called resist.

3. Perception • The ability to receive sensory impressions from one’s surroundings and relate them to what one knows. • Sensing, perceiving, thinking, and developing concepts are closely related. • The aesthetic experience merges the cognitive with the affective response. • Thinking and feeling come together.

4. Sense + Perception + Feeling + Thinking = Concepts • Visual + look + enjoy + compare = color • Auditory + listen + marvel + contrast = tone • Tactile + touch + joy + analyze = texture • Olfactory+smell + happy + classify = scent • Gustatory + taste + amazed + describe = flavor

5. Traditionally, the five senses are as follows: 1. Visual 2. Auditory 3. Tactile 4. Olfactory 5. Gustatory To this basic list, Montessori (1967) would also add the following senses: 16. Chromatic 17. Thermic 18. Sterognostic 19. Baric 10. Kinesthetic More than Five Senses

6. Visual learners Tend to be holistic thinkers Learn the big picture and not the individual pieces Prefer visual images such as pictures to words Take visual clues from photos, charts, and graphs Like to read, write, or draw about what they are learning Are very interested in the finished product Learning Styles

7. Learning Styles (continued) Auditory learners • Think analytically • Good at speaking and listening • Enjoy discussing what they know and learn from listening to others • Easily follow oral directions and move sequentially from task to task

8. Tactile-kinesthetic kearners Prefer using their hands and bodies to learn And holistic learners who thrive on hands-on activity to get the big picture Are animated Learn by doing Dislike sitting still and listening to someone try to teach them verbally Learning Styles (continued)

9. Your individual learning strength is likely to become your teaching style. • A teacher who is a visual learner will use books and printed information to teach. • A teacher who is an auditory learner will rely on teaching verbally and engage children in discussion. • A teacher who is a tactile-kinesthetic learner will use manipulative materials, role-playing, creative dramatics, and hands-on activity to facilitate children’s discovery learning.

10. Matching Teaching and Learning Styles • Recognize that children learn in different ways and discover children’s preferred learning styles. • Recognize how your teaching style is influenced by your own learning style. • Capitalize on how individual children learn and teach to their preferred learning style. • Teach in ways that honor a variety of learning styles.

11. Visual learners Will be drawn to the visual arts Will have no trouble imagining pictures in their heads to draw upon for their art Will work on the totality of their picture rather than focus on component parts Are interested in their finished products Art and Learning Styles

12. Auditory learners May prefer music activities Do not rely on the pictures in their heads Will sequentially make a picture by mastering the individual parts and pieces Art and Learning Styles (continued)

13. Tactile-kinesthetic learners Will thoroughly enjoy art activities such as smearing their hands in finger paint or using their fingers to squish play dough or shaving cream Art and Learning Styles (continued)

14. Involves looking and seeing. Involves a thorough visual exploration rather than a passing glance or quick look. Visual perception and discriminating between letters and words will be required for reading and writing. The Visual Sense

15. Involves hearing and listening, two very different processes. Children who hear do not always listen. Children are exposed to much auditory stimulation and learn at a very early age to tune much of it out. Casual hearing is appropriate much of the time. Music, literature, or teacher’s directions warrant concentrated listening. Our aim is to help children know when to switch from passive hearing to active listening. The Auditory Sense

16. Involves feeling and touch. May operate in conjunction with the visual sense. Activities that involve touching and feeling textures are categorized as tactile. The Tactile Sense

17. Animals rely heavily on the sense of smell; people do not. Children use their sense of smell more than adults. Children may refuse to try a food solely on the basis of its smell or color (visual cue). Green, yellow, and orange vegetables hold little olfactory or visual appeal for some children. The Olfactory Sense

18. Taste appeal The Gustatory Sense

19. A subset of the broader sense of vision Involves the ability to identify, match, and discriminate among colors The Chromatic Sense

20. Deals with one’s perception of temperature. How do things feel: hot, cold, warm, lukewarm, or tepid? The Thermic Sense

21. Being able to recognize objects through tactile-muscular exploration without the aid of vision The Sterognostic Sense

22. Recognizing objects as heavy or light and gradations in between The Baric Sense

23. Involves a whole-body, sensorimotor muscular response The Kinesthetic Sense