My Five Senses

People have 5 senses.
We can hear.
We can see.
We can smell things.
We can taste things.
We can feel things we touch.

People have five senses. The five senses are hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching:

We hear with our ears.
Go here for information about ears and the sense of hearing.

Sometimes people have a hearing impairment, which means they cannot hear at all or only to some degree.
Go here for more information about hearing impairments.

We see with our eyes.
The eyes work like a camera. They take in light from the thing we are looking at and make a tiny picture of it on the back of the eyeball. Nerves inside the eyes take a message to the brain about the picture.The brain tells us what it is we are looking at.

The light goes into the eyes through the pupils. The part at the back of the eye where the picture is made is the retina. The light is focused onto the retina by the lens, which is just behind the pupil. The nerve to the brain is the optic nerve.

Go here to read more about eyes and how they work:
http://www.allaboutvision.com/resources/anatomy.htm
http://www.eyecareamerica.com/eyecare/anatomy/
http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=152&id=1730Some people have vision impairment, meaning they cannot see very well or cannot see at all.
Go here to read about some of the things that can go wrong with people's eyesight
Can your eyes trick you?
Go here to see some optical illusions!

We smell with our nose.
When we breathe, air goes into our nose through the nostrils. Inside the nose there are lots of tiny hairs. They catch bits of dust that are in the air. Damp, sticky stuff called mucus traps more dirt and germs as they enter the nose.

Nerves inside the nose take messages to the brain about the smells that come into the nose in the air. The brain tells what we are smelling.

Go here to find out how your nose works: http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=152&id=1686

We taste with our tongue. The tongue is covered with about 10,000 very tiny bumps called taste buds. Taste buds on different parts of the tongue taste different things; sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.

Chemicals in the food we eat make the taste buds work and nerves in the tongue send messages to the brain which tells us what it is we are tasting.

Smelling food also helps us to taste our food. Have you ever noticed that when you have a cold, you can't taste anything?

This map of the tongue shows the different parts of the tongue and what they taste

Go here to read more about taste buds and the tongue: http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/taste_buds.html