Our Senses and their Functions

My Senses

What is that smell? Do you hear that noise? Taste this! Look at me! Feel this, is it soft? When you hear, or even use these phrases, you probably do not stop to think about why we use them. Well, it is because of our senses. Without us even knowing, our sense organs (nose, eyes, ears, tongue, and skin/hands) are taking in information and sending it to the brain for processing. If we did not have them, we would not be able to smell, see, hear, taste, or touch anything! Talk about a boring life.

Your five senses seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching/feeling help you notice the world around you. They are pretty powerful! You use your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your nose to smell, your mouth/tongue to taste, and your hand/skin to feel.

    Lets explore how our senses at work, and what kinds of information they can tell us.

The sense of Sight

The eyes work like a camera, they take in light from the things we are looking at and
make a tiny picture of it on the back of the eye. With the sense of sight you can identify
the colors, shapes and size of the objects.

The sense of Hearing

The sensesThe sounds come into the ear, inside the sounds hit some ear drums, the nerves get
the message and tell the brain about that sounds, it can recognize it and that is how
we can identify what we are hearing. The sounds can be loud, soft, sharp, low or
high.

The senses of Taste

The mouth/tongue is able to identify what we are tasting, this body part (organ) uses the
nerves to send messages to the brain about the flavors. They can be sweet, bitter, sour or
salty.

The sense of Smell

When we breathe air goes into the nose,there are some nerves that take the
message to the brain about the smell that come into the nose, and the brain tell us what
we are smelling. The smells can be soft or strong.

The senses of Touch/ Feeling

The nerves in the skin all over the body send messages to the brain to tell us what
we are touching such as sticky, rough, soft, cold, hot or warm.

 

The senses are important because we use them to know:

1. What is out there in the environment?
2. How much is out there?
3. Where it is?
4. What changes the things, places and time?