Five Senses Emergent Reader to Teach SEL

Inside: Use this Five Senses Emergent Reader to celebrate all the ways we can learn about kindness with our senses.

When we are young, we spend a great deal of time focusing on our five senses and learning all about them because this is how we gather information about our world.

When we pay attention to what we hear, see, smell, taste, and feel, we are then able to describe what the world means to us.

So whenever we need to learn about any new topic-including kindness-we can use our five senses to help us better understand, with a deeper meaning like with this 5 senses foldable activity.

We can ask what kindness looks like and what kindness sounds like, and what kindness feels like…we can even figure out what kindness tastes and smells like.

And to help kids use their sight, sound, feel, taste and smell to learn about kindness, we can use this Five Senses Kindness All About Me Emergent Reader set.

Other Ways to Learn about Kindness

Some kids understand kindness, but other kids-most kids- need to be intentionally and explicitly taught how to be kind.

So we show them different ways they can be kind while they learn about the alphabet with this Kindness Zoo.

And we sort kind and unkind actions with these sorting games that are perfect for centers.

We can decide what is kind and why with this Kind or Trash Game.

We can write about kindness with this Kindness Journal. We can connect kindness to our sense of hearing with these songs about kindness for kids.

We can read kindness books like these and make kindness bookmarks here.

And since we use our senses to learn about most things in this world, we can absolutely use our five senses to learn about kindness.

One of the easiest ways to learn about our senses is through books and exploration.

5 Senses Books we can Read:

My Five Senses

Our 5 Senses

You Can’t Smell a Flower with Your Ear

The Five Senses

And we use this Five Senses Kindness Emergent Reader.

How to Use the Five Senses Kindness Emergent Reader

1. Purchase and download the 5 Senses Kindness Emergent Reader.

2. Print out the version you wish to use: color or black and white and cut them apart. I swear by my paper cutter I bought my first year teaching because I can’t cut a straight line.

If you use the black and white version, use these skin color crayons so students can color in the people to match the skin tones of themselves and classmates.

3. Read the book together. You can follow up with partner reading, silent reading, group reading, or reading to a class pet/stuffed animal.

4. Use the Discussion Starters to further the conversation about our 5 senses and how we can use our senses to learn more about kindness.

5. Connect the reading with writing about kindness and our senses and answer questions like ‘What does kindness sound like?” and “What does kindness feel like?”