Multisensory Activities: Promoting Reading Skills Using All 5 Senses

Even after teaching your kids letter sounds and reviewing their knowledge with flash cards, you might find that they still struggle with reading. When you adapt your literacy teaching methods to incorporate multisensory activities, children find ways to make connections, store memories, and eventually learn how to read.

Touch

Let your kids use letter tiles, kinetic sand, and playdough to form letters. Simply tracing sandpaper letters with their fingers can help them develop reading skills as well. This hands-on approach can help students feel more engaged with their learning process.

Sight

Apart from flash cards, make labels on classroom furniture so your students can see stimuli with their eyes. You could also make charts with giant words printed on them. Try to make it look as appealing as possible.

Smell

Ask students to form letters using smelly markers or scented shaving cream. This way, they might be able to associate certain letters with specific fragrances. You could even make them trace the letter S with a strawberry-smelling marker. (Strawberry begins with the letter ‘S’!)

Hearing

Rhyming songs are an awesome way to promote reading skills. Since kids hear stimuli with their ears, you could incorporate activities that include sounds. Encourage kids to participate in read-alouds, introduce them to audiobooks, and have them closely listen to you when you say each letter.

Taste

Provide your kids with letter-shaped crackers, cereal, and cookies to help them identify letters with ease. They could also make letters using food items (like tasty chips!), and then later devour their creations.

These learning methods will definitely make reading super fun for your child. We hope you try them soon and find them to be helpful!