My Five Senses

Picture Book
Title: My Five Senses
Author: Aliki
Age Level: 3+
Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary
This book explains the five senses that we have to the reader, taste, touch, hear, smell, see.  It also gives examples of how we use our five senses, such as when we eat an ice cream cone we use our sense of taste.  It goes through different situations when you would use more than one sense at a time such as playing with a puppy, you use your sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching.

Opinion
I think that this book is sort of unappealing and boring in a sense.  The illustrations are bright and large but the dialouge is very simple.  This book does not have that much depth to it and would not be quality literature in my opinion.  This type of book would not provide children a chance to use literary elements to find deeper meaning within the text and gain as much information and knowledge as possible.  The lesson that this story has to offer is of importance, though.  Children need to learn about their five senses and I think this is an introductory book that would help students become aware of the different senses we have and how we use them in our daily life.

Using this book as an attention getter to this topic would be my only use for this book.  I would read this book to my kindergarten students and then have them describe what each sense is and how we use them.  I could also have them make a chart with each sense as a box header and then have them write in examples of how they would use each sense. This activity will open their eyes to the many, many different ways we use our senses and how they are a part of our everyday lives.

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/body-parts/curriculum-planning/6209.html