Blind Bartimaeus

Science Idea

We are currently teaching the story of Blind Bartimaeus  and I had to share some of the ideas our science team did.  

First the teachers  discussed all our 5 senses:  touch, seeing hearing, smelling and tasting .  

For the younger children they made booklets for the5 senses. On one side of the card was  a picture of the senses like an ear, nose,  finger/hand, mouth and eye, on the other side was  the item that they used to identify the sense they used.  For the hearing sense there was a rubber band wrapped around the card and the kids wrote  down what they heard ..snapping , plucking sound, for smelling there was a double faced piece of tape with cinnamon on it for the kids to smell, for touch there was a piece of foam attached to the card, or you could use sandpaper. for vision there was a piece of reflective foil, and for taste there was a mint choc.. kiss wrapper glued on the card after they ate the candy.  We have a  child who is diabetic and so for this child she used another sense, smelling, to tell what she smelled, (choc. mint ) before she glued the wrapper to the card.   The teachers talked about someone who can't see must use their other senses.  Some of these exercises were done with their eyes closed to reinforce how a blind person uses all their senses. 

For the older kids they talked about the sense of taste and how there is sweet, sour, bitter, and salty sensors on our tongues,  With 4 mystery solutions, Salt water, sugar water, lemon juice, onion juice or tonic water and Q-tips dipped in the mystery solutions the kids had to guess what was salty, sweet,  sour, and bitter.  Then they mixed some of the flavors together.  The 2nd teacher recorded their impressions. 

The 2nd part to this lesson for the older kids  they used different flavored jelly beans (Ike and Mike) and you had to close your eyes. All the students were given the same colored Jelly bean and they  had to identify the flavor.  A recorder (2nd teacher) wrote down our impressions  and what flavor we thought it was.  We found that color and smell (once the jelly beans was opened) was another way to identify the Jelly bean without actually tasting it.  When our guesses were recorded we were told what the correct flavor was and we were given a 2nd jelly bean of the same flavor and this time we were allowed to see, smell and taste it.  It was a fun exercise in tasting.  

Music Idea

Our song that we are singing is "The Blind Man"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFaRT9K2KkY

Cooking Idea

In the kitchen we are using the sugar cookie idea and decorating eye cookies,  but I ran across another idea, of using M&Ms to write a letter from the Braille  alphabet  on the cookie.

Also from the science room came a braille demonstration with nail heads pounded into wood.

Visit from a Blind Person and/or Guide Dog

This week we have a blind woman  coming to talk to the children about what life is like as a blind person.  We happened to have a a vet in our congregation  and I asked her if she took care of any guide dogs  and she DID!