Lesson 4: Using senses to observe and look closely
Use this Reception senses activity to help children explore and compare environments through sight, hearing, touch and smell. Children listen carefully to their outdoor environment, investigate different textures and compare the sounds they hear with those of a rainforest or another contrasting environment.
The lesson supports Understanding the World: The Natural World and develops the early scientific enquiry skill of using senses to observe and look closely. Children use sensory observations to notice features of their surroundings and describe similarities and differences between environments.
How can we use our senses to explore an environment?
Children spend time outdoors listening, looking, smelling and touching different textures before comparing their observations with the sounds of a rainforest. They consider what causes different environmental sounds and create pictures to show differences between the rainforest and their own outdoor school environment.
Reception senses and environment activities
This lesson includes:
- teacher lesson plan
- launchable teaching slides
- outdoor sensory observation activity
- rainforest and local environment sound comparison
- forest sounds listening activity
- natural and man-made texture collage activity
- leaf rubbing, bird sound survey and smell walk ideas
- colour-matching and texture sorting activities
- assessment questions
✨ How to use the launchable slides
Launch the presentation directly in your browser and use it on your interactive whiteboard.
📝 Click Notes to see teacher guidance, answers and additional information where included.
⬅️ ➡️ To move through the presentation, click on the slides first, then use the left and right cursor arrow keys on your keyboard.
For technical and copyright reasons, these presentation slides are available to launch online rather than download.
Explore more lessons in our Reception Different Environments science unit, or see our complete Reception science scheme.
This resource is part of the Mrs Mactivity Science Scheme of Work →
