This is another great activity for enjoying the outdoors after dark.
It’s a variation on the theme of Joseph Cornell’s Unnature Trail. During the day have one or two people hide a bunch of objects that may not be seen, but are likely to be heard, smelled, touched or tasted, like the ones on the following list.
At night have one or more people locate the items on the list using all of their senses, except sight.
Choose your location carefully, so that items can be located safely.
Materials:
- Battery powered radio (hearing)
- Ticking clock (hearing)
- Bar of scented soap (smell)
- Banana, orange or grapefruit peel (smell, taste)
- Sandpaper (touch)
- Cold can of soda (touch)
- Rope to mark the boundaries of an area (optional)
- Blindfolds (optional)
Add any additional sensory items that you think of.
Procedure:
1. Choose your location. This can be a yard, meadow, border area, or trail along a disused dirt or woods road. Make sure not to set up near poison ivy or in a swampy area. If you want to make it a bit easier, you can use rope or twine to create a boundary for participants.
2. Place the objects along the trail so that they are at different levels - from ground to four feet above ground - on a boulder, stump, crotch of a tree and under grapevines. Take advantage of initials carved in trees (touch) or any similar existing sensory opportunity .
3. Test the set up, ensuring that some objects are easy to locate and others more challenging to locate.
4. You may want to sketch or mark a map to make clean-up easier.
Sensory Trail Rules
1. Participants may be blindfolded or they may simply close their eyes.
2. Participants will count the number of unnatural items they touch, smell, hear or taste in the designated area.
3. Have one person at a time begin. As each person gets 15 feet along the trail, start the next person.
4. When each person completes the trail, have them list how many unnatural
objects or settings they found and how they found them.
How many objects did the participants find?
What was the easiest to locate? What was hardest to locate?
Did participants use all other senses or did one sense dominate their discovery?