Need a mood lift? The magic lies in your 5 senses. Create sensorial experiences for yourself and your child while homeschooling

See the clouds floating above. Watch the bees buzz. Follow the ant line.

Get up and smell the coffee. Go out and smell the roses. Put on some perfume.

Lick the chocolate from the mixing bowl. Munch on cucumbers. Have a mango feast.

Listen to music. Put out a wind chime. Read aloud a poem. Feel the wind on your skin.

Enjoy flicking the bubbles of lather while washing up. Play with sand and pebbles. 

See. Smell. Taste. Hear. Touch. Be in the moment with each of your 5 senses. Learn, experience, live. A physiological way to manage your and your little one’s psychology during this period of extreme and prolonged isolation. 

Here are my tips as an educator and parent for simple, everyday experiences that you can create at home. I have mentioned a couple of possibilities for each sensorial experience to give you an idea. Young children are sensory motor scientists. Once you initiate, they will lead the way.

See

• Watch the shape of clouds and imagine. Discuss what they see in which cloud and what you see. Name these shapes and imagine a conversation between the two/three characters that you and your child/ren have conjured up. The cool part of this is that this can be done in as little as 5-10 minutes or continued as a much longer and involved game with clouds changing shape or stories becoming creative and can be a continued conversation for days together besides possibility of actually creating your own family story book with words and illustrations. If you do it during the day, you have the additional advantage of getting your dose of vitamin D.
• Find an old family album and talk about the pictures of your child as a baby or your own and your parents of younger days. The group photos of family. Your/your child’s class photos would make great talking points while looking deeply into the hairstyles, dresses, backgrounds and facial expressions. Phenomenal connection with family members and vocabulary building would happen, not to mention the observation skills that would go a long way in building focus and an eye for detail.

Hear:

This one is my favourite one. I have often used music during teaching and training sessions for both children and adults and the results are simply phenomenal. Most teachers who have used this in their classrooms would agree.

• Choose a favourite song of yours whether instrumental or with lyrics and sit calmly with your eyes closed for at least 2 to 5 minutes. Do the same with your child/ren’s favourite music/rhyme as well. Just hear it together with eyes closed. The quiet that would follow would be priceless in managing your and your child’s moods. You can use your sense of hearing by just sitting quietly near an open window or outside of the walls of your home. Listen in to all kinds of sounds that you may hear and make a mental list of all. You may want to compare notes with your child/ren about it after the quiet time.
• Collect different kinds of materials and/or instruments at home that can make sound, take turns to play the instrument/s behind a curtain to just hear the notes and texture of sound being produced which are different from one another, in a guessing game.  Even simple materials like whistles, spoons on plates, striking on glass tumblers or bowls filled with water upto different levels, pebbles in a box, seeds in a paper bag, ladles on inverted plastic buckets, rustle of leaves, besides musical instruments like keyboard, guitar, flute, harmonica would give a great sensorial immersion of tuning in to sounds of the moment.

Smell:

• Go ahead, smell the spices one at a time, real fruit smell, smell of cooking flat breads, baking, scent of vanilla, chocolate, coffee and even laundry and cleaning agents. What emotions, memories, visuals do they evoke for you and your child/ren? There is a deep association of smells with memories. Remember your mom’s perfume? The unique smell of your baby? Your dad’s shaving lotion? Your grandmother’s pickle? Dwell into those memories for a few minutes. Embark on a journey that a few seconds of smell can take you along.
• Take a walk around your home and discover how the different rooms of your home smell different and what you feel about it. What can you do if some space does not smell right or the shoe shelf stinks? a bowl of fresh flowers/potpourri, airing the space, lighting a candle or incense, dusting and mopping… bad smell has an impact that impacts the mood and feelings in an instant. Just as it is difficult to feel angry when you can smell a great fragrance of food or flower.

Taste:

• Licking your fingers or smacking your lips of jams, chutneys, sauces, cookie dough. All things that you can enjoy with your child/ren and can pry you out of gloom. It will bring your thoughts right into the moment of experience. Try it!
• Set up an interesting blind tasting fest yourself or create a little quiz for your child/ren to play. Put out some bits of various edibles – solid bits,  liquid potions, pastes and powders and see if you can classify them as sweet, savoury, sour, bitter, umami. One at a time or if you can make a concoction of more than a few kinds of tastes.

Touch:

• If you can, have a bath tub day with your child once a week. When you can enjoy the lather, the feeling of cozy immersion, float and sink a few things along with yourselves. Skin is the largest sensory organ of your body. Water does miracles to your not so solid skin 🙂 it literally reaches you inside through its million pores. While at it, if you can give a wash to your pet as a joint project.  It is a great sensorial experience for all involved.
• Hug. Kiss. Caress. Often and then some. Do some grooming to each other. Enjoy a head massage a hairdo or makeup that your child would be excited to experiment with and do the same to your child. Be a character from a story book. Collect swatches of various textures like velvet, wool, sandpaper, grass mat and say a net. Put them in a box or in a bag to touch and feel. It makes for a good in the moment sensation. If nothing, have a plush toy or a squeezy ball to play with your child/ren. Slime, shaving foam, corn-starch paste make great touch play with all ages of children. I have enjoyed playing with the cornstarch paste goop for the longest possible time with teenagers while just chatting with them, giving them something to do with their hands. While at it, do not forget popping the bubble wraps 🙂

Finally, give your rational mind a break as you take in the environment around you with all your senses. Each one of the senses is as precious as the other in giving you and your child’s emotions an instant fillip.

Have you tried any such activity in the past? Do share if you have. If you have not, go ahead and try one  each  day of the week at least and on the weekend, give them a go all at once.  How did it go, let me know. Looking forward to reading your sensational sensory experiences.

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