Sensory fun in Year 4!

In Year 4, we have been looking at a book called River Story by Meredith Hooper, which is a narrative poem.  We are working towards writing our own narrative poems based around an imaginary river.

To help us to generate ideas to use in our poems, we took part in a range of sensory experiences.  We will include the sensory vocabulary that we produced in our finished pieces so that the reader can immerse themselves in the river experience.

We had 7 bases with different sensory activities which we rotated around.

At Base 1, we blew bubbles in water.  We looked at the bubbles and listened to the sounds they made.  Then we thought about how and why bubbles might appear on a river.

On Base 2, we carefully observed leaves floating in water.  We looked at how they were floating and how the water moved around them.

We enjoyed Base 3 the most!  We poured water over an umbrella and watched the droplets flow off and fall to the ground.  We then stood under the umbrella and listened carefully to the sounds the water made as it hit the umbrella.  We compared the sounds when we were under the umbrella with those we could hear when we were outside of the umbrella.

At Base 4, we felt the sensation of the water.  To begin with we only immersed our fingertips in the water, then we thought about the change in sensation as we began to slowly move our hands deeper.  We also made different patterns and ripples in the water, thinking about how the movements were made and what might replicate these in a river.

Base 5 was all about rocks which might be found in the riverbed.  We placed droplets of water on a range of rocks using a pipette.  Then we observed the droplet and added multiple droplets. We tried with different rocks and thought about the things that had changed and those that had stayed the same.  We also touched the rocks before and after we got them wet, noting down the change in sensation.

At Base 6, we thought about the sedimentary rock in rivers.  We observe the movement of gravel as we moved our hands in different patterns.  We also gently swished the gravel around the tray.  We thought about how the gravel felt and what we could hear.

Finally, Base 7 involved the transference of water between two containers.  We looked at the shape the water made when we poured quickly compared with when we poured it slowly, and listened to the different sounds.  We also observed how the light shines through the water.

We all had a fun and exciting morning, and came up with some fantastic ideas which we will use in our own River Stories.  We hope to share them with you soon!