How to use these five senses worksheets
Each page takes about 5 to 10 minutes. You need crayons, a pencil, child-safe scissors and a glue stick, plus a few real objects for each sense if you have them.
- Read together. Read "My five senses" one box at a time. After each, do the action: blink and look around, go quiet and listen, sniff your sleeve. Five boxes, five tiny experiments.
- Trace the words. Name each picture (hand, lips, drum, sun) and ask which sense it goes with. Then trace and color.
- Hear it or smell it. Cut out the eight pictures. Before gluing, hold each one up and ask, "Would you hear this or smell this?" A drum is easy; a pie makes them think.
- Match body parts. Point to your own eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hand, then draw the lines on the page together.
Our five senses activities for preschool has 35 more ideas sorted by sense, plus a five-day plan if you want to make a week of it.
Tips by age
Age 3: Do the read-together page and the sort only. Cut the pictures out ahead of time and let your child do the gluing. Name every object with them; vocabulary is half the learning here.
Age 4: Let them cut the straight edges themselves and trace the words with a crayon. On the matching page, ask them to show you the body part before drawing the line.
Age 5: Ask for reasons: "Why does a lemon go under smell? Could you taste it too?" Then have them add one more picture of their own to each group on the back of the page.
Games to play with the pages
- Sound or smell guessing game. Hide a bell or a lemon in a bag. Your child closes their eyes and guesses, then finds the matching picture on the sort page.
- Body part Simon says. Use the matching page as a script: "Simon says touch the part you smell with."
- Senses walk. Take the matching page outside and tick each sense as you use it: something you see, hear, smell, touch, and a snack to taste afterward.
- Feely bag. Put a few household objects in a bag (a sponge, a spoon, a pine cone) and describe them only by touch: soft, rough, cold, bumpy.
- Listening count. Sit still for one minute and count the sounds you hear. Draw them on the back of the tracing page.
When your child is ready for more
Once your child can name all five senses and match them to body parts, they're ready to describe things using more than one sense ("the cookie smells sweet and feels crunchy") and to sort by texture, taste and loudness.
The full My Five Senses Science Unit builds on these pages with more tracing and matching, big pictures to color and trace, word cards, counting and look-and-count pages, a reading page, a maze, a coloring page and a certificate to finish.
Questions parents ask
They are made for ages 3 to 5. Three year olds enjoy the read-together page and the sorting with help from an adult, who can cut the pictures out. Four and five year olds can usually trace the words and draw the matching lines on their own once you have talked through the page.
Yes. The PDF downloads straight away with no email, account or trial. The four pages come from our full five senses unit, so they are the same quality as the paid pages, and you can use them as many times as you like at home.
The activities are identical. Print in color if your child is still learning to recognize the pictures, since color makes the bell, lemon and flower easier to name. Black and white saves ink and turns every page into a coloring page too. Choose US Letter or A4 for your printer.
Start with real things before paper. Ring a bell, sniff a lemon, feel a soft blanket, and name the body part each time: "I hear it with my ears." Then use the read-together page to review. Keep it to 5 to 10 minutes and follow your child's interest.
The full My Five Senses Science Unit has 18 pages, including two tracing pages, two matching pages, two big pictures to color and trace, word cards, counting and look-and-count pages, a reading page, a maze, a coloring page, a draw and write page and a certificate.
