The 5 Senses

We usually take for granted all the ways in which we can experience the world, but after reading The 5 Senses, kids will have a newfound respect for these extraordinary abilities. They’ll start with basic facts about the human eye, peer into the eye’s complex structure, and see how some scientific instruments, like telescopes and electron microscopes, are basically mechanical eyes that allow us to view things outside of the range of normal vision. Following this is a lively exploration of skin – the body’s largest organ and the one sensory organ we can’t live without.

Eye-opening details on the rest of the five senses, for kids, come next, with a focus on how our senses are uniquely adapted to the human environment. Our abilities to hear and smell, for example, are not as powerful as other animals’ – probably because we don’t need to track our prey anymore – but the emotional connections associated with certain scents continue to play an important role in how we store and recall memories. A fun experiment on taste is sure to be a hit, in which kids try to identify foods when all their other senses are blocked. The 5 Senses, for kids eager to discover how we experience the world, is sure to promote other revelatory explorations like this.

Show Less