Studying the human body is always a fun unit with kids. And one of the basic concepts is the five senses, right? But it turns out that every time I cover this unit, I learn something new. This time it was about how our taste buds work.
Now I’m probably exposing myself as an ignoramus, but I really never thought much about taste buds. Not what they did, not what specific tastes they detect, and certainly not where they were located. But I know a lot more about them now and so do my kids!
Check out our hands-on learning about taste buds, including a fun paper craft that you can recreate with your little ones!
Learning about Taste Buds
What really got me started on this activity was reading the Sesame Street book My First Book About the Five Senses
with the kids.
This is going to be really pathetic, but I didn’t know that there are different taste buds on different parts of our tongues!
See? The taste buds at the back of the tongue are for bitter tastes, while sour and salty taste buds are located on the left and right sides. The tip of the tongue is where the sweet taste buds are located. Neat!
So I created a similar “tongue” on pink construction paper with taste bud “zones”.
Pretty close, right?
After we read the book, I handed Roo the paper tongue and some torn pages from a magazine so he could find pictures of food and glue them in the correct taste bud “zones”.
Any time there’s a chance to use scissors, he’s raring to go.
See that image of coffee on the table? Roo didn’t know where to put that picture on the paper tongue. After all, he’d never tasted coffee.
Time to do a taste test and find out!
He was super excited to taste a grown-up drink. But afterward, he came to the instant conclusion that…
Black coffee definitely belongs in the “bitter” zone.
So, he finished finding pictures and gluing them in the right places.
And while he worked, I read about taste buds with Piglet. As you can see, she had a pretty good time.
And Roo is all done! Coffee and onion are in the “bitter” section, pickles and grapefruit are in the “sour” section, salted nuts and chips are in the “salty” section, and a brownie and a clementine make up the “sweet” zone.
A tad bigger than the tongues in our mouths, but you get the idea.
We really enjoyed this project and Roo was so proud of his work that he ran out into the living room to show the rest of the family.
For more hands-on science fun, follow my It’s Science board on Pinterest!
And don’t miss the other fun human body learning activities this week from the Early Elementary Blogging Team!
STEM Respiratory System Investigation Asthma versus Healthy from Life Over C’s
What’s Inside Your Blood – An Edible Model from Preschool Powol Packets
Human Body Printables for Kids from Living Life and Learning
Telling the Time – Body Clock from Rainy Day Mum
Human Body Games for Kidsfrom The Natural Homeschool
5 Senses Unit from 123 Homeschool 4 Me
Bones from Sugar Aunts
Human Body Math from Planet Smarty Pants
Parts of the Eye Painting from Still Playing School
What a clever idea! I love that you glued on images of things that would have that taste!
What a fun project! And your kids are so adorable!!
I loved this lesson! It was a fun idea to make giant tongues and then matching magazine pictures to the different tastes that the tongue detects. 🙂 It is super cool and it definitely brings the lesson home with the hands-on activity.
love this post as I am just covering this topic with my little girl…great site…really enjoy reading your posts as we are also a homeschooling family x
Hi Selena, this is interesting! I’m still trying to figure a way to teach my 4 year old that spicy is different from hot. Any food that has spice in it is spicy but only a few spices are hot! Sigh!
Would love to see your posts in the Practical Mondays Link Up:)
What a fun activity to learn about taste buds! We actually have this same book downstairs…and now I know a great activity we can do with it.
Yay! Hope you enjoy it!