Magic School Bus -5yr- The Five Senses

Magic School Bus Party  For my son's 5th birthday we hosted a Magic School Bus - The Five Senses Party.

Guests were aged from 2 to 5 (younger siblings being invited) so we had an Inflatable Jump to fill in between games.  I downloaded a picture of the Magic School Bus covered in ears, eyes, noses, mouths and hands, colored this in then had it enlarged.  This I put on our front door for when the guests arrived. 

I also downloaded individual pictures of the five sense organs onto sticker paper and cut these out.  When the kids arrived, we had plain party hats on which they could stick their colored-in sense organs.  I also covered my outfit in these stickers! 

For games we had a hearing game (downloaded sound clips such as lighting, a dog bark, clapping, etc. and some theme tunes for popular kids programs) which were a few seconds long - the kids had to guess what it was. 

For taste we made four drinks - salt water (salty), lemonade with sugar added (sweet), lemonade without sugar (sour), and tonic water (bitter).  The look on the kids faces when they tasted salty made good pictures. 

For touch we had brown bags containing cotton buds, cold spaghetti, ice and wood bark and got the kids to describe what they were touching. 

For smell we soaked cotton buds in food flavoring extracts (coconut, lemon, orange and peppermint).  As the kids were too young to identify the smell, we did two of each type and they had to match the like smells.  We never got around to the sight game but it was going to be a pin the glasses on Ms Frizzle (a downloaded picture of Ms Frizzle's face which was enlarged, then glasses printed onto sticker paper for the kids to "pin").   

For the cake we took a smaller copy of the picture created for the front door and took it to our local supermarket who reproduced it onto a sheet cake.  We tracked down a School Bus piñata on the internet and glued a picture of Ms Frizzle in the front window. 

For party favors, we did one item for each sense - chocolate for taste, smelly stickers for smell, mini kaleidoscopes for sight, party blowers for sound and sticky balls for touch.  All the kids seemed to have a great time, and for the pre-school set the games were very well received.