Little Elf Five Senses Christmas Book

During the Christmas season there is so much to experience…lights, jingle bells, yummy sweets and Santa hats everywhere…it can be an overload for your senses.  That makes Christmas the perfect time to teach or review the five senses and our Little Elf Christmas book is a great resource for doing just that.

During the 5 days before Christmas vacation we spend time focusing on one of our senses using the Christmas fun around us.  Let’s go sense by sense and discover what Christmas celebrations have to offer.

What Do You See?

There is so much to see during the holidays, but one thing that makes little ones’ eyes light up are the Christmas lights all around.  To teach the sense of sight, have your learners bring in one Christmas decoration or picture to share with the class or create a bubble map of the different things they see during Christmas.

Then, have your learners create shimmering lights on their Christmas tree by coloring the tree and adding some glitter.  GLITTER…dare I say to use such a messy, sparkly material…you bet…but, I save myself some clean up by grabbing glitter pens for my little ones to use…just as sparkly and much less messy.

What Do You Hear?

When teaching the sense of sound what better way than with some jingle bells?!?!  Together we sing…you guessed it…Jingle Bells and create a list of all the sounds we hear during the holidays.  From, busy shoppers to choreographed Christmas lights, our list goes on and on.

Next, the learners create a reindeer to add their sleigh bells to. After coloring, simply cut pipe cleaners into 2-3 inch sections and have your learners add a small jingle bell.  Then poke both ends of the pipe cleaner through the paper (underneath their reindeer) and twist and lay flat on the back of the page.

What Do You Feel?

I might be teaching my toddler not to touch the ornaments or presents under the tree, but this lesson is a great way to allow your learners to explore all the different textures during the holiday.  Bring in some Christmas items, such as, tree branches, Santa hat, wrapped presents, poinsettias, ornaments, and more for your learners to explore.  Place them in a bag and have them guess what’s inside or simply create a chart for each item.

Then, have your learners create a soft beard for their Santa.  After they color their Santa (red, gray or even blue…heehee) give them a cotton ball to stretch and glue onto Santa’s beard.

What Do You Smell?

Pretty sure this is my favorite day of the week!  There are so many great smells during the holidays and to explore those scents we bring in some smelly Christmas objects…pinecones, pumpkin spice, peppermint, and cinnamon to name a few.  Then, together we make some yummy gingerbread cookies in the toaster oven while we create the new page in our Christmas book.

For this page we color our gingerbread man and add some glue on certain sections.  Next, we pour some yummy smelling spices on our page.  We either use cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice to pour over our page and shake it off to reveal a sweet smelling gingerbread man.

What Do You Taste?

Time for some taste testing and what better treat to eat during Christmas than candy canes.  For this sense we get some different flavored candy canes and break them into small pieces.  Next, the learners taste one candy cane at a time and we create a graph to show which candy cane we liked the most.

After our tasting we create a stocking to add to the last page of our Christmas book.  Then, we glue the sides and bottom of our stocking and glue it to our book.  After the glue dries we add a small candy cane ( I purchased these at our dollar store).

That’s it…a week full of meaningful science exploration for the Christmas season.  Your learners will be able to appreciate all that Christmas celebrations and decorations have to offer.  You can grab your own copy of our Little Elf Five Senses Christmas Book here!  This resource comes in both color and black and white.