What does purple smell like?
Close your eyes. What is purple? Without any visual clues, can you differentiate purple from other colors? Can you smell purple? Can you taste purple? Although adults may take their understanding of colors for granted, children need the help of multi-sensory experiences to achieve that awareness. Multi-Sensory Learning As a former kindergarten teacher and child care center director, I was well acquainted with teaching children colors. I had done many thematic units related to the subject; in retrospect, however, they were all visual! Early childhood education emphasizes children’s multi-sensory learning through experimentation, investigation and discovery (Dewey, 1938; Elkind, 1987; Fisher, 1965; Holt, 1989; Katz & Chard, 1989; Malaguzzi, 1993; Piaget, 1983; Rinaldi, 1993). Multi-sensory learning, which gives children opportunities to create their own knowledge, is the foundation for creating conceptual understanding. Young children, then, learn through direct encounters with the immed
