Blind Taste Test (The Five Senses)

This is the last post of our week exploring the five senses. We have already discussed sight, hearing, touch, and smell. Today we are going to look at an activity to teach your child about their sense of taste.

You taste something when a taste receptor cell on a taste bud on your tongue reacts with chemicals from your food. We use our sense of taste to detect sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and savoriness. You can read more at the Wikipedia article on the sense of taste.

The way that I introduced the sense of taste was through a blind taste test. This activity can be as complex or as simple as you like. (We opted for the simple side).

Here's What You Will Need for the Blind Taste Test

• various foods (for the best result, choose things that your child already enjoys) cut into small pieces
• toothpicks
• paper plate to arrange the foods

Directions for Doing This Activity with Your Preschooler

Arrange the food items on a paper plate. I made one plate for my daughter and one plate for me. Stick a toothpick into each piece of food.

To ease your child into the activity (because let's face it-eating something with your eyes closed is weird) let your child “test” you first. Close your eyes, and allow them to select and feed you one of the options. You can describe for your child what you are tasting (sweet, salty, crunchy, soft, etc) and guess the food. Then you can turn the tables and quiz your child.

To extend the activity, you could have the child taste each food twice: once holding their nose, and once normally. Because smell enhances the sense of taste, it should be harder to identify the food with their nose pinched. Another thing you could do, is to select one option from each of the “main” flavors: bakers chocolate for bitter, lemon for sour, pretzels for salty, fruit for sweet, and mushroom for savory. Younger kids might not enjoy being surprised by the more unpleasant flavors, however, so use at your discretion.

If you found this activity useful, please share or leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you!

If you need a book to go along with this activity, check out the 5 Senses Book Roundup!