My Five Senses

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

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

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 see some optical illusions!
Go here to read more about eyes and how they work: http://www.stlukeseye.com/Anatomy.asp
Some people can not see very well or can not see at all.
Go here to read about some of the things that can go wrong with people's eyesight

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.

We taste with our tongue. The tongue is covered with tiny bumps called taste buds. There are about 10 000 of them. 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.

Different parts of the tongue taste different things

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