Five Senses: I Can Hear ...

Five sentence starters are printed on this 1st grade page, one to a card, each in grey on the first of two sets of handwriting rules: I can hear, I can see, I can smell, I can taste and I can touch. A small organ picture sits at the left of every card. The child finishes the sentence on the line the starter sits on and carries on to the second line if they need it. Nothing is supplied beyond the starter, so what the sentences say is entirely the child's.

This is the open face of the senses family and the only one with no right answer. The starter carries the grammar, so a six-year-old who could not yet compose a sentence from nothing can still write a true one, and the five senses give five different prompts rather than five goes at the same one. Taste and touch are usually the hardest to fill and the most interesting, because they send a child looking round the room rather than reaching for the obvious.

One sheet, five sentences, ten lines. It reads well aloud afterwards and makes a natural display. The title names the first starter, but all five are printed. Use it at the end of a senses unit, after the naming and sorting pages, or take it outside and let the children fill it from what is actually around them.