Our Taste Sense

We focussed on the sense of taste.

We were all very excited and waited patiently while Joy looked in her bag and we wondered what she was going to pull out.

First up were the sour patch kids. We held on to them first, some of us couldn't resist having just one little lick. Out of 7, 4 of us thought they made our engines run just right and 3 students thought they slowed down their engine. We showed on our dial how the sour ptch kids made us feel.

Next up was the potato chips. We held onto them until we all had some. And then we tasted them. We described them as salty and crunchy and all 7 of us agreed that they made our engines feel just right. In fact we enjoyed them so much that we even asked Joy if we could have some more!!

Our next taste was peppermint.

We described the peppermint in different ways. We said, "it smells like adult toothpaste", "it's so hot", "it's too hard", "it's too strong" and "fire came out of my mouth". Out of 7, 4 of us thought it made our engine slow down and we were in the blue zone and 3 of us thought it made our engine feel just right in the green zone. Some of us even had to spit it out.

Poor Emma held on to her tongue for a while after and she showed us what this did to her engine.

Next up were the minties. Somne of us showed excitement when we saw them.

The chewing action that happens when we eat a mintie was calming for most of us, especially for Jasper and Cooper and made our engines feel just right. This was broken down as 5 out of 7 in the green zone and 2 in the blue zone.

Then ww tried the sweet jellybeans.

We all really liked the jellybeans. For 5/7 of us it made our engine feel just right and for 2 of us, it sped our engines up and Cooper shows us this on his dial.

We finished off our lesson with Joy by eating an m&m mindfully. We looked at the m&m, felt it, popped it into our mouths and sucked it. Someone said "It's falling apart because it's wet". The m&m varied our engines from green to yellow and when we got to the nut some of our engines began to slow down. Thanks Joy for another great lesson on the sense of taste. It was an insight watching to see how taste can change the way our engine runs. We learnt that we all enjoy the crunchy and chewing motion so maybe we need to make sure we have things in our lunchbox that support this. We then wrote about our experiences. Have a read......

Sensory - This week's sense was touch

This week our sensory session was on the touch sense.

We got to explore different things to touch. Here is an example of some of the things we explored with our hands.

Maisy really enjoyed the feel of the mohair scarf. Jasper enjoyed getting this brush rubbed on his legs, arms and back.

Some of us had a turn in the body sock. Check us out, we tried to make different shapes inside the body sock.

Angus felt a little scared inside the body sock as he couldn't see.

All of us liked exploring these spiky balls that you could squeeze and press and see the worms that looked trapped inside. Inside one of the balls there looked like a shell.  After we had had time exploring, we thought about how touching certain things made our engines feel. We learnt that we all thought the mohair scarf and the kinetic sand made our engines feel 'just right.' When we got back to our classroom we wrote about our touch experience and related it back to 'Our Zones of Regulation' or how touching a specific thing made our engine feel. 

Here are our stories........

Sensory - We focussed on our sense of sight

Last week we focussed on our sense of sight. This was how looking at different things with our eyes makes our engines feel, what colours or things slow down our engines and which things speed our engines up.

After looking at these different colours we found out that the colour that made our engine just right was the green colour for all of us. The pale pink was also just right for most of our engines. The colour red increased the speed of our engines. We then looked at some picture scenes. Here are some examples of what we looked at.

The beach scene made some of our engines run too fast because we can get excited at the beach swimming in the water and making sand castles. Someone said their engine ran slow and was in the blue zone when they saw the sail boat because they knew they got sea sick. After we looked at each slide, we used our dial to say how this made our engine feel.

One of the pictures that really calmed our engines was this one of a city street that you can see on our tv screen.

We enjoyed looking at the picture and searching for different things. An example of this was, Can you see a person with a striped top? Find someone on a bike. We also liked looking at pictures that modelled examples of good behaviour to us, such as the children sitting on the mat.

This picture of the untidy room either made our engines run too fast for half of us or made our engines run too slow.

At the end of our session on sight we discovered that different pictures and colours can changes how our engines feel. Some of the colours or pictures do similar things to all of our engines and that using pictures as models and searching for information in pictures can help our engines to feel just right.

This week's sensory was push, pull and heavy work

This week we focussed on push, pull and heavy work. We began our session with Joy by playing tug of war. The heavy pulling action made some of us very tired as we tried to pull the rope away from the other team. 

Angus showed us his sore hand from pulling so hard.

We reflected on our dials about how tug of war made our engines feel.

Next we imagined the rope was a slithering snake and we had to jump over it. 

Cooper really enjoyed holding the end of the rope and making it slither along the ground.

We had a turn with the zoom ball. You had to open your arms out to make the ball zoom towards your partner.  We really enjoyed working with the zoom ball.

Next we did some pushing to see how this made our engines feel. Some of us hopped in the box and we tried pushing the box. This calmed our engines for those of us that were pushing. We even enjoyed seeing how many we could fit on and in the box.

We had such a fun time at sensory today. Thanks Joy for helping us to become more aware of how our engines run when we try different activities.