June 24 – Celebration of the Senses Day

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• nDon an experiment. Arrange 5 things for a friend to taste withoutn seeing, and have him or her arrange a blind taste-test for you.n Also, try a blind taste-test while holding your nose. Can you telln the difference between a chunk of peeled apple and a chunk of peeledn raw potato – with your eyes closed and your nose firmly pinchedn closed?

  Or test your smeller with your eyes closed, or feeln things with your hand to see if you can identify them by touch.

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• nTryn the memory game with things you see (looking at a tray full of smalln objects for a full minute, and then trying to write them all down),n but then with again with things you hear: Have your friend clap an rhythm, and then you copy it. Have your friend add to the rhythm,n one bit at a time, and see how long a sequence of sounds you cann remember accurately.

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• Writen a description of a place, using colorful adjectives as well asn carefully chosen, specific nouns and verbs. Try describing a crowdedn beach, an amusement park, a bakery, or a mountain meadow.

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• n Maken every meal today a riot of colors and of different textures.

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  nSomen people have synesthesia, in which their senses cross over. Thatn means that they can hear colors and see sounds, for example. Usen your imagination to decide what each of the rainbow colors wouldn sound like.

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  nDidn you know that we have more than five senses? Wikipedia states that,n in addition to sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste, we also have an sense of balance and acceleration, a kinesthetic sense of where then various parts of our body are located in relation to the restn (that’s why you can touch your nose with your finger even with yourn eyes closed), a temperature sense, a sense of pain, and a sense ofn time passing.

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n (Inthink that the first four are usually bundled into the “touch”nsense, but apparently they shouldn’t be?) 

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n Inwonder about a sense of direction. Many people seem to feel veryn strongly which direction is north, and which is east, south,nwest—even when we are cut off from the sun and moon and otherncelestial clues. But do we just THINK we have a sense of direction?nHas this ever been tested?

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• nMoren experiments – try to eat food in an unusual way by playing withn temperatures and textures. Freeze some grapes and eat them frozen.n Color your orange juice brown (with green food coloring) and yourn lemonade orange; do they taste different? Put your favorite chunkyn vegetable soup through a blender, then heat and eat – does itn still taste as good? Heat some crunchy granola in milk, as if itn were oatmeal, and see how hot granola-and-milk stacks up against then cold-cereal version. (Be sure to stir often so that the milk doesn’tn scald!)
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nSaint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec 

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nIntinRaymi (Sun Festival) in Peru
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• nJunen holidays

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• nJunen birthdays

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• nHistoricaln anniversaries in June

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• nJulyn holidays

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• nJulyn birthdays

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• nHistoricaln anniversaries in July

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