Make it Monday: Bumpy Tongue
SHARED By: Karyn Smith, Assistant Director at Early Learning Foundations Preschool
Did you know that on average a human tongue is covered with 10,000 taste buds? We use our tongues to tell us if something is sweet, sour, salty or bitter. The taste buds on our tongues are largely responsible for our sense of taste and helps us to identify different flavors of the food we eat.
The Polar Bear Classroom did a science experiment called “Taste Buds Delight” to learn about our tongue and explore our sense of taste. We displayed a picture of a tongue, which allowed us to locate areas which sensed sweet, sour, bitter or salty foods. We taste tested different types of food and then looked at each other’s tongues with a magnifying glass to see where these taste buds were located on each other! We concluded that everyone has tiny taste buds on their tongues and when we eat something, those tiny buds are more visible.
What You’ll Need:
- Lemon Juice
- Strawberries
- Saltine Crackers
- Magnifying Glass
- Partner
What You’ll Do:
First, grab a partner and make a sample plate. Take turns tasting each food, looking at your partner’s tongue after each taste of something new. Notice the tiny bumps that contain taste buds in the regions of salty, sweet and sour. You can show how closely our sense of smell is related to our sense of taste by trying each food again, this time holding your nose.