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32 Engaging Five Senses Activities Kids Love

Help them see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the world!

Learning about the five senses is a classic preschool and kindergarten unit. Yes, it’s fun to watch students taste something super sour, or take a listening walk around the school, but why do we teach the five senses? Here’s everything you need to teach the five senses, including rationale, books, songs, and activities.

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What are the five senses?

The five senses are the primary ways that we experience the world around us.

• Sight: how we see light and color
• Sound: how we hear frequencies of sound
• Taste: how we taste sweet, salt, sour, bitter, and umami
• Smell: how we identify chemicals in the air and flavors of food
• Touch: our skin identifies pressure, vibrations, and other types of touch

Why do students need to learn about the five senses?

When we teach students about the five senses, we teach them about their bodies and how they experience the world around them. That’s just the beginning. The five senses are foundational, and spending time examining, experimenting, and understanding the five senses helps students:

• Focus on one thing at a time: When we ask students to just taste or just listen, they are training themselves to focus and attend.
• Learn the scientific method : The process of asking questions and experimenting to learn more about the five senses is often students’ first opportunity to put the scientific method into action.
• Learn how humans take in information from the environment: Kids are learning how they work, and an important part of that is how we take in information and use it. Students will use their five senses throughout school and their lives to understand the world around them.
• Connect with other ideas: Talking about senses also exposes students to vocabulary and concepts that they’ll use in other areas. For example, talking about differences between tastes, or opposites like loud and quiet.

Activities To Teach the Five Senses

Here are our favorite ways to teach the five senses.

1. Head out for a five senses scavenger hunt

Childhood 101/Nature scavenger hunt via childhood101.com

A nature walk is one of the best ways to engage all five senses and introduce the concept to kids. Try it in different seasons for a new adventure each time!

Learn more: Nature Scavenger Hunt at Childhood 101

2. Hang a five senses anchor chart

Kindergarten Smiles/Five senses poster via KindergartenSmiles.blogspot.com

Post an anchor chart and fill it in as you discuss each of the senses and the body parts related to them. (Tip: Laminate your anchor charts so you can reuse them from year to year.)

Learn more: Five Senses Poster at Kindergarten Smiles

3. Make oobleck

Raising Dragons/Oobleck via RaisingDragons.com

Create oobleck with corn starch, water, and food coloring and see what words you can use to describe how it feels to touch, to drop, and to smush in your hands.

Learn more: Oobleck at Raising Dragons

4. Break out Mr. Potato Head

Fun With Firsties/Mr. Potato Head poster via NorthwesternKiddies.blogspot.com; A Little Pinch of Perfect/Mr. Potato Head activity via ALittlePinchofPerfect.com

Mr. Potato Head toys are perfect for teaching little ones about the five senses. Learn how to make a Potato Head poster from Fun With Firsties , then grab the free printable spinner from A Little Pinch of Perfect and use it to play a fun senses game.

5. Make a set of finger puppets

Simple Everyday Mom/Five senses puppets via SimpleEverydayMom.com

Get your free body-parts printable at the link below, then have kids color them, cut them out, and glue them to wood craft sticks. Use them for all sorts of five senses activities!

Learn more: Five Senses Puppets at Simple Everyday Mom

6. Sort objects according to senses

Preschool Toolbox/Senses sorting activity via ThePreschoolToolboxBlog.com

Sorting games are always fun for kids. Use a muffin tin to sort smaller items, or try Hula-Hoops for sorting larger items.

Learn more: Senses Sorting Activity at The Preschool Toolbox

7. Set up Five Senses Stations

We Have Kids/Five senses stations via WeHaveKids.com

Allow kids to explore each of the senses on their own with these stations. Visit the link for plenty of great ideas for what to include at each one.

Learn more: Five Senses Stations at We Have Kids

8. Use all your senses to explore popcorn

Play to Learn Preschool/Popcorn senses activity via PlaytoLearnPreschool.com

Popcorn is a terrific food for senses activities, especially if you can use an air popper to make it fresh while kids watch. Plus, you get a yummy, healthy snack when you’re done!

Learn more: Popcorn 5 Senses Activity at Play to Learn Preschool

9. Or try Pop Rocks instead

Little Bins for Little Hands/Pop Rocks activity via LittleBinsforLittleHands.com

If you’re feeling a little more adventurous, tear open a few bags of Pop Rocks candy and use your senses to experience them to the fullest. Kids will go wild for this one!

Learn more: Pop Rocks Activity at Little Bins for Little Hands

10. Solve the case of salt vs. sugar

Kindergarten Kindergarten/Salt vs. Sugar activity via KindergartenKindergarten.com

Guide kids as they try to determine which jar has salt and which has sugar. The catch? The sense of taste is the  last one they get to use!

Learn more: Salt vs. Sugar Activity at Kindergarten Kindergarten

11. Put on a pair of lookers

Mrs. Jones’ Creation Station/Lookers activity via MrsJonesCreationStation.com

In the clever story The Looking Book (Hallinan/Barton) , two boys discover the world around them after their mom gives them each a pair of “lookers”—which are really just toy glasses . Pass out pairs to your students and send them out to use their sense of sight.

Learn more: Lookers Activity at Mrs. Jones’ Creation Station

12. Explore up close with a magnifying glass

Stay at Home Educator/Magnifying glass activity via StayAtHomeEducator.com

Take the sense of sight even deeper with a magnifying glass. Show kids the tiny details their eyes can see with that bit of extra help.

Learn more: Magnifying Glass Activities at Stay at Home Educator

13. Take a listening walk

Teach Preschool/Listening walk via TeachPreschool.org

Inspire kids with a reading of The Listening Walk (Showers/Aliki) , then head outside to take one of your own! Make a list of the sounds you hear, or give kids a checklist (get a free printable one at the link below) of sounds to listen for.

Learn more: Listening Walk at Teach Preschool

14. Learn how sounds help you make decisions

Completely Kindergarten/Sound activity via CompletelyKindergarten.blogspot.com

This is a cool activity to help kids understand that while our five senses collect information, it’s our brain that helps us interpret information and make decisions. You can use this idea with hearing or any other sense.

Learn more: Sound Activity at Completely Kindergarten

15. Play a sound-matching game

Play to Learn Preschool/Matching eggs game via PlayToLearnPreschool.com

Fill plastic eggs or medicine bottles with a variety of small items. Ask kids to shake them and see if they can figure out what’s inside based on sound alone. It’s harder than they think!

Learn more: Sound Eggs at Play to Learn Preschool

16. Decide which flower smells the best

No Time for Flash Cards/Smell activity via NoTimeforFlashCards.com

Let kids use their sense of smell to decide which flowers smell the best. You can try this with all sorts of items, and remind kids that sometimes there’s no one right answer!

Learn more: Smell Activity at No Time for Flash Cards

17. Write scratch-and-sniff names

Fun-a-Day/Scratch-and-sniff names via Fun-a-day.com

Write the letters with glue, then sprinkle them with Jell-O powder. When it dries, kids can feel the texture and sniff the scent!

Learn more: Scratch-and-Sniff Names at Fun-a-Day

18. Sniff a collection of scent bottles

Things To Share and Remember/Scent bottles via Thingstoshareandremember.com

Add a few drops of essential oils to cotton balls and drop them into spice jars. Ask kids to sniff them without looking, and see if they can identify the smells.

Learn more: Scent Bottles at Things To Share and Remember

19. Go on a scent hunt

PreKinders/Scent hunt via Prekinders.com

This activity also uses essential oils, but this time you hide the scented cotton pads around the room and see if kids can sniff their way to the right locations!

Learn more: Scent Hunt at PreKinders

20. Test your sense of taste with jelly beans

Stay at Home Educator/Jelly bean tasting activity via StayAtHomeEducator.com

Looking for five senses activities for students with a sweet tooth? Jelly Belly Jelly Beans are known for their true-to-life flavors, which makes them perfect for a blind taste test. Want to make it even more interesting? Add some Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans into the mix!

Learn more: Jelly Beans Activity at Stay at Home Educator

21. Do an apple taste test

Play to Learn Preschool/Apple taste test via PlayToLearnPreschool.com

Our sense of taste is more subtle than kids might realize. It’s easy for them to recognize the taste of an apple, but they’ll be surprised to discover they can actually tell different kinds of apples apart too.

Learn more: Apple Taste Test at Play to Learn Preschool

22. Stroll down a sensory walk

Teaching Mama/Sensory walk via TeachingMama.org

Fill up a series of plastic tubs with different items like beads, sand, shaving cream, and more. Then let kids take a walk through them, experiencing all the different sensations.

Learn more: Sensory Walk at Teaching Mama

23. Build a texture board

Pre-K Pages/Texture board via Pre-KPages.com

This is such an easy DIY project! Just pick up an inexpensive cutting board, then attach fabrics and papers with different textures. Little fingers will love to explore them.

Learn more: Texture Board at Pre-K Pages

24. Describe how different things feel

Some of This & Some of That/Touch board via MandeeandBrandy.com

The sense of touch gives us some of the best descriptive words. Ask kids to feel a variety of items and list the adjectives they’d use to describe them.

Learn more: Touch Board at Some of This & Some of That

25. Make mystery touch boxes

PreKinders/Touch boxes via PreKinders.com

Turn empty tissue containers into mystery boxes! Drop an assortment of items into them, and ask kids to reach in and identify what they are using only their sense of touch.

Learn more: Touch Boxes at PreKinders

26. Make and use Whisper Phones

Oz Lit Teacher/Whisper phones via OzLitTeacher.com.au

Kids can hear their voices in their head, but what do they really sound like? Create whisper phones out of PVC pipe and put them in the reading area. Have students read stories to themselves, either by reading the words or reading the pictures.

Learn more: Whisper Phones at Oz Lit Teacher

27. Tasting bottles

Gift of Curiosity/Tasting bottles via GiftofCuriosity.com

Use little bottles with droppers to create taste bottles. Fill each bottle with a different taste. Some ideas:

• Sugar water or juice (sweet)
• Salt water (salty)
• Lemon or lime in water (sour)
• Cocoa powder dissolved in water (bitter)

Have students put a drop of each on their tongue (or in a spoon to taste) and record which taste they experience.

Learn more: Tasting Bottles at Gift of Curiosity

28. Create a flip-book

Mrs. Richardon’s Class/Flip book via MrsRichardsonsClass.com

A flip-book that combines images and words gives students a reference to prompt vocabulary as they’re working on other five senses activities.

Learn more: Flip Book at Mrs. Richardson’s Class

29. Peg the sense

Big World Teaching/Peg the sense activity via TeachersPayTeachers.com

An activity like this, where students look at a card and identify the sense that you use to experience each, could be a good practice activity for centers. It could also serve as an assessment that students can complete on their own.

Buy it: Peg the Sense Activity at Teachers Pay Teachers

30. Learn what it’s like to live without a sense

Saddle Up for 2nd Grade/Helen Keller activity via SaddleUpforSecondGrade.com

Once students have a feel for the five senses, teach them about how people who are blind or deaf use their other senses. Show students how to read a braille book (public libraries often have collections of braille books to check out), or put headphones on and watch a subtitled movie. This is a good time to read about Helen Keller and how she learned language through touch and smell.

Learn more: Hellen Keller Activity at Saddle Up for 2nd Grade

Read more: Helen Keller books for young readers

31. Sing songs about the five senses

If you’re looking for activities to teach the five sentences that include music and movement, try adding a five senses song to morning meeting to reinforce the vocabulary.

What is a morning meeting without Jack Hartman?

Another five senses song students will love!

32. Read books about the five senses

Read alouds are perfect activities to teach kids about the five senses. Picture books show students all the ways they use their senses, and some silly ways too.

My Five Senses by Aliki

This classic book is a straightforward informational text about our senses and what we do with each.

Buy it: My Five Senses on Amazon

I hear a Pickle by Rachel Isadora

This book puts a clever spin on the five senses with information about the various ways we can experience everyday items through our senses, like hearing a pickle (crunch!).

Buy it: I Hear a Pickle on Amazon

How Do Animals Use Their Five Senses by Alejandro Algarra

An overview of how animals use the five senses, and a starting point for a discussion about how the five senses shape who we are.

Buy it: How Do Animals Use Their Five Senses? on Amazon

Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli

The board book is simple but effective. A little boy tastes all kinds of things, some are yummy and some are yucky.

Buy it: Yummy Yucky on Amazon

Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld

In this book, students can point out what they see—it’s all about perspective. This reinforces the idea that we can all see things slightly differently.

Buy it: Duck! Rabbit! on Amazon

The Blind Men and the Elephant retold by Karen Beckstein

In this classic story, a blind man has to use his sense of touch to figure out what an elephant is.

Buy it: The Blind Men and the Elephant on Amazon

Ten Ways To Hear Snow by Cathy Camper

A little girl goes on a walk to her grandma’s house and along the way counts all the ways she hears the newly fallen snow. Such a great book to introduce the idea of listening intently and creatively.

Buy it: Ten Ways To Hear Snow on Amazon

Llama Llama Yum Yum Yum! by Anna Dewdney

A Llama Llama book with scratch-and-sniff … yes, please!

Buy it: Llama Llama Yum Yum Yum! on Amazon

Love these five senses activities? Check out Inspiring Science Books for Kids in Elementary School .

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Five Senses

Five Senses introduces students to the functions of the five main senses in the human body. Students will learn about sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. They will discover how each of these senses work and how some even affect others.

The “Options for Lesson” section of the classroom procedure page lists a few additional suggestions to incorporate into the lesson. You can, for example, have students create a poem or song for the five senses. Another suggestion is to read a story and have students identify the senses characters use throughout the story.

Description

Additional information, what our five senses lesson plan includes.

Lesson Objectives and Overview: Five Senses teaches students about sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Students will learn how to define each and explain their differences. They will also be able to discuss how each one is useful. This lesson is for students in 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade.

Classroom Procedure

Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.

You will need to gather a number of items for the journal activity, as well as for the lesson overall. The items you will need to introduce the lesson are blinking lights, sweet or sour candy, mothballs, a loud alarm clock or loud music, and a fan. For the journal task, you will need items that are specific to one sense. Ideas include photos, a book, perfume, flowers, sandpaper, Play-Doh, a radio, lemon juice, and salt water.

Options for Lesson

There are a few suggestions in the “Options for Lesson” section for additional activities that you can include if you have time or want to extend the lesson. One idea is to have students write a poem or song about the five senses. You could also go outdoors and search for examples of items that represent each of the senses. Another idea is to read a short story and have students name the senses characters use as the story progresses. One final idea is to discuss how one sense can grow stronger when another is lost, such as improved hearing when a person loses their sight.

Teacher Notes

The paragraph on this page provides a little extra information or guidance for the lesson. It explains the importance of finding what works for your class. You may want to divide the lesson into smaller lessons that focus on one sense at a time instead, for instance. Use the blank lines to write down any other ideas or thoughts you have for the lesson before you present it to the class.

FIVE SENSES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES

Sight and hearing.

The Five Senses lesson plan contains two pages of content. The lesson begins by asking a series of questions. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel? What do you taste? Students will discover that the answers to these questions relate specifically to what we call the five senses, and they will learn how exactly each one works.

First, students will learn about sight. Sight depends on the eyes. Inside the eye, there are special lenses that absorb light to help people see. If there isn’t enough light, people can’t see. This means the sight depends on the presence of light. Of course, too much light isn’t good either and can cause people to lose their sense of sight.

The second sense students will learn about is hearing. Hearing depends on the ears. There are two parts of the ear: the outer ear and the inner ear. The outer ear is the part other people can see, the part of the body on the sides of the head. It catches sound as it travels toward it. The inner ear takes the sound vibrations and sends them to the brain for understanding.

Smell, Touch, and Taste

Next, students will discuss the sense of smell, which, of course, depends on the nose. Inside the nose, there is a substance that takes in the fumes of an odor and sends a message to the brain to identify the odor. When someone gets a cold, which affects the nose, their sense of smell weakens. The nose also helps clean the air we breathe in, and it also affects the way we speak. If someone closes their nose while they talk, their voice changes. The sense of smell affects taste to some degree as well.

Touch or feeling is the next sense. There are certain parts of the skin that collect information and send it to the brain. This means that the sense of touch works throughout the entire body. Some parts of the body are more sensitive to touch than other parts.

Finally, students will learn about taste. The taste buds on the tongue allow people to sense four specific types of flavors: salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. Many foods contain multiple flavors, such as both sweet and sour at the same time. The tongue can also detect whether something is hot, cold, creamy, crunchy, or dry.

FIVE SENSES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS

The Five Senses lesson plan includes three worksheets: a journal page, a review worksheet, and a homework assignment. Each handout will help reinforce students’ understanding of the content and concepts they learned throughout the lesson. The guide on the classroom procedure page outlines when to hand out each worksheet to the students. You are welcome to alter or adjust wherever needed.

JOURNAL PAGE

For this part of the lesson, you will first need to divide students into groups of two or three. Distribute the items you collected in preparation for the lesson among the groups of students. Throughout the rest of the class period, the items will rotate to different groups (or students will rotate to different items). Students will write down or draw pictures of the items one by one. They will use the items to observe which sense they used with relation to the item. There are five different spaces to write about five different items.

REVIEW PAGE

There are several sections on the review page. Students will first match statements to the sense it represents. For instance, “The chirping birds woke me up in the morning” would relate to hearing. The second section asks students to write an example of each sense as it relates to the classroom at that moment. If they hear kids talking or smell something specific, they can write about those things. The final section requires students to recognize words that relate to specific senses. Words like see  and  vision , for example, relate to sight. Words like  bitter and  sour would refer to taste.

FIVE SENSES HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

For the homework assignment, students will sit outside of their house and observe their environment. They will write examples of what they see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. They will also write the time they started and the time they ended the activity. The directions dictate that students should stay outside for at least 15 minutes. It also states that they can complete the activity indoors if they can’t go outside. If they want to, students can choose to draw pictures of what they observe rather than, or in addition to, writing about it.

Worksheet Answer Keys

There are three pages in the lesson plan that provide answer keys for two of the worksheets. For the journal page, the answer key provides a sample answer that you can also use to explain the activity with your students. For the review page, the answer key provides the answers in red except for the second section. Students’ responses will vary on this section, so the answer key is blank for this section. There is no answer key for the homework assignment as there are no right or wrong answers. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.

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5 Senses Worksheets

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Enhancing Learning Through Worksheets: Exploring the Five Senses

In our daily lives, we rely on our five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell—to understand and interact with the world around us. These senses play a pivotal role in how we perceive, experience, and learn from our environment. To harness the power of sensory perception in education, educators and parents can turn to a fun and creative tool: Five senses worksheets. These five senses activities not only teach children about their senses but also encourage them to explore, learn, and grow through interactive activities.

Understanding the Five Senses

The foundation of our exploration begins with a clear understanding of the five senses. These sensory experiences collectively shape how we interpret our environment and our interactions within it. By breaking down each of the five senses, we can better comprehend their significance in our daily lives and in the learning process.

Benefits of Using Worksheets to Teach Kids the Five Senses

Engagement and interaction.

Children learn best when they are actively engaged and participating in their process. Five senses worksheets provide the ideal platform for this engagement. By involving young learners in a senses activity that requires them to identify, match, and describe sensory experiences, these five senses activities turn education into an immersive adventure.

Conceptual Understanding

The abstract nature of sensory experiences can be challenging for young minds to grasp. This is where sensory detail worksheets come into play when learning the five senses. A five senses unit will teach kids to break down complex sensory experiences into manageable components. For instance, through "cut and paste" activities, kids can match sensory stimuli with the appropriate senses, bridging the gap between theory and practical application.

Types of Sensory Worksheets and Activities

• Sight: Incorporate visual learning with worksheets that encourage children to explore colors, shapes, and optical illusions. "Draw what you see" exercises to complete will foster creativity while enhancing their visual perception skills.
• Hearing: Sound recognition activities challenge children to recognize different sounds, improving their auditory skills and attention to detail.
• Touch: Introduce children to different textures through tactile worksheets. From "feel and match" activities to descriptions of how different objects feel to the touch, these five senses activities stimulate sensory exploration.
• Taste and Smell: Engage the senses of taste and smell with "taste worksheet" activities. These activities can prompt children to identify different flavors and scents, enhancing their sensory vocabulary.

Building Critical Thinking and Observation Skills

Critical thinking is nurtured through sensory activities that teach kids to think analytically about their experiences. Thought-provoking questions like "Why do certain smells make us hungry?" or "How does touch help us identify objects?" promote deeper understanding of the five senses.

• Integration with Other Subjects: Sensory education isn't confined to science lessons. Integrating sensory activities with language arts, art, and other subjects enhances a child's holistic educational experience. For instance, descriptive writing assignments based on sensory experiences can be a great way to blend sensory exploration with language development.
• Real-World Applications: Understanding the five senses extends beyond the classroom. From recognizing spoiled food by smell to appreciating the sensory elements in art and culture, our senses play a significant role in our daily lives.
• Parental Involvement and Home Activities: Parents can utilize free printable five senses worksheets at home. These can be great activities for family bonding and exploration. Hands-on activities that encourage children to explore their surroundings, hear different sounds, and interact with various textures can make education an enjoyable journey for both parents and children.

Teaching kids about their five senses is a captivating journey that opens doors to a deeper understanding of the human body and the spaces we inhabit. With a plethora of creative worksheets available, educators and parents can engage children's senses, nurture critical thinking, and provide an enriching educational experience. By incorporating five senses activities into their teaching methods, they empower young learners to explore, learn, and appreciate the fascinating world of sensory perception.

Tips for Creating an Interesting Five Senses Worksheet

• Choose a Focus: Decide which of the five senses you want to emphasize in your worksheet. Ensure that your worksheet aligns with the age and grade level of your target audience, such as pre k or kindergarten kids.
• Create Interesting Content: Develop content that captures the attention of young learners, especially those in preschool or kindergarten. Incorporate visually appealing images, bold colors, and relatable scenarios related to the chosen sense. Make sure the content is age-appropriate and relatable to their everyday experiences.
• Incorporate Hands-On Activities: To make the worksheet interactive, include activities that allow children to engage with the topic you're focusing on. For instance, for a taste worksheet, provide spaces for them to make a picture or paste pictures of foods they've tasted.
• Utilize Cut and Paste Elements: Incorporate the concept of cutting and pasting activities. For instance, design a section where kids can cut out images or words related to the chosen topic and paste them in the correct places on the worksheet.
• Provide Clear Instructions: Write clear and concise instructions that guide kids through the activities. Use simple language and make sure the instructions are easy to follow, especially for young learners.
• Include Sensory Descriptions: Provide opportunities for kids to practice describing sensory experiences. For instance, if focusing on sight, include images of different things or objects, and ask learners to write a sentence or illustrate what they see and how it makes them feel.
• Offer Free Printable Versions: If possible, provide a free printable version of the worksheet. This allows educators, parents, and caregivers to easily access and share the worksheet with their students or children.
• Encourage Personalization: To make the worksheet more interesting, add a personal touch. Include sections where children can share their own experiences related to the topic being explored. For instance, they can illustrate or write about their favorite things to taste or smell.

By following these steps, you can make an interesting sensory worksheet that effectively teaches young learners about the five senses. Your worksheet will not only be educational but also interesting and enjoyable for preschoolers and kindergarteners.

Even More Storyboard That Resources and Free Printables

• Checklist Worksheet
• Resume Worksheet
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How to Make a 5 Senses Worksheet

Choose one of the premade templates.

We have lots of templates to choose from. Take a look at our example for inspiration!

Click on “Copy Template”

Once you do this, you will be directed to the storyboard creator.

Give Your Worksheet a Name!

Be sure to call it something related to the topic so that you can easily find it in the future.

Edit Your Worksheet

This is where you will include directions, specific images, and make any aesthetic changes that you would like. The options are endless!

Click "Save and Exit"

When you are finished, click this button in the lower right hand corner to exit your storyboard.

From here you can print, download as a PDF, attach it to an assignment and use it digitally, and more!

Happy Creating!

Frequently Asked Questions About 5 Senses Worksheets

What are some engaging hands-on activities to teach about the senses.

Engaging hands-on activities are invaluable for teaching about the senses. For instance, a "Sensory Scavenger Hunt" can be organized, where students use their sense of sight to find and identify objects with distinct visual characteristics. Exploring various textures through a "Texture Touch and Describe" activity taps into their sense of touch, encouraging them to feel and articulate differences between objects. A "Blindfolded Taste Test" involves using blindfolds to enhance the experience of tasting different flavors, engaging their sense of taste. The creation of a "Sound Symphony" lets students compose music using everyday objects, highlighting their sense of hearing. Lastly, the "Mystery Smell Challenge" prompts students to identify and describe various scents, activating their sense of smell. These hands-on activities captivate students' attention, making learning about the senses an interactive and memorable experience.

Can sensory worksheets be used for cross-disciplinary learning?

Absolutely, these worksheets have significant potential for cross-disciplinary learning. By integrating sensory exploration into various subjects, students can develop a deeper understanding of concepts while enhancing their sensory awareness. In science, students can conduct experiments that involve their senses, fostering critical observation skills. Language arts can benefit from descriptive writing exercises where students vividly articulate sensory experiences. Art classes can leverage sensory elements to create multi-dimensional artwork. Even math can be incorporated as students quantify and analyze sensory data. The versatility of sensory worksheets makes them an effective tool for cultivating a holistic understanding that spans across subjects, encouraging kids to connect their senses to broader knowledge domains.

How do sensory worksheets promote cognitive development?

They play a vital role in promoting cognitive development by engaging multiple areas of the brain. Through sensory activities, students actively process and analyze information, enhancing their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. When they match sensory stimuli in cut and paste activities, they strengthen their ability to categorize and classify. Descriptive tasks improve language skills as they articulate sensory experiences. They also nurture observation skills, as students closely examine details to identify textures, flavors, or sounds. These activities encourage students to think analytically, make connections, and draw conclusions based on their sensory input. Overall, sensory worksheets offer a dynamic platform for cognitive growth by stimulating various cognitive functions and fostering a deeper understanding of the world around them.

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The 5 Senses Science Experiments

Our five senses allow us to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch . They are necessary for us to experience the world around us, primarily through observing– a primary science skill . Find out more with these 5 senses science experiments

Try these 5 Senses Science Experiments

Eyes & sight.

These two activities within the 5 senses science experiments, let’s see just how important your eyes are. We use our sight more than any other sense. We see because our eyes and brain work together to make pictures of what is in front of us.

For this first of the 5 senses science experiments, you’ll need someone to help you. Standing several feet away from the helper, toss a bean bag or soft squishy ball back and forth. After a few tosses, blindfold the person helping you, take a few steps away from them, and then pull a blindfold over your own eyes. Now try tossing the bean bag back and forth again. Talk about what senses you had to use when your eyes were covered and what was harder to do when you couldn’t see. How many more times did you catch the bean bag with your eyes open than when you had the blindfold on?

You could also try rolling a ball back and forth, with you and your helper sitting on the floor. If you only cover one eye, instead of using the blindfold, how hard is it to roll the ball to your helper? Our eyes work together, so it is much harder if one of them is covered up.

Learn about the Braille alphabet with this project. Braille is what people who cannot see use to read and write! They ‘see” the letters by feeling them with their fingertips instead of looking at them with their eyes. Print out a copy of the Braille alphabet . To make the letters raised like Braille, put a drop of white glue over each black dot. When the glue is dry you will be able to feel the raised dots with your fingers.

You might think that different soda pops taste different, but will you be able to tell when you are blindfolded? Try it out!

You will need a blindfold (a bandana or piece of dark fabric will work well), two cans of soda (one cola, such as Coke or Pepsi, and one clear, like Sprite or 7-UP), a glass of water, and someone to help you.

Ask your helper to blindfold you. Make sure that you cannot see through the fabric. Have the helper open one can of soda without telling you what kind it is. Carefully take a sip with the blindfold on, and guess what kind it is. You can’t see the color to help you know what it should taste like, so it might  be a little harder to tell than normal. Take the blindfold off. Were you right? If you want to try guessing a second time, take a few sips of water first, to rinse the taste of the first soda from your mouth.

You might have been able to guess what kind of soda it was, even with a blindfold on. Do you think you could have done it if you couldn’t smell anything either? Try the test again, but this time plug your nose when you taste the soda. Was it harder to taste the difference this time? Though it may seem like there is a big difference between clear soda and cola, our taste buds work together with our sense of smell to help us taste things. This is why food doesn’t seem to have as much flavor when you have a stuffy nose.

Making Sense of Senses Science Projects – Sounds Like Fun

What is sound? Sound is caused when objects vibrate (move back and forth very quickly). Vibrations create sound waves  that can travel in all different directions through the air and into our ears.

You can use a slinky to show how sound waves move. You will need someone to help you for this project. Have your helper sit on the floor and hold onto one end of a slinky (a metal one will work best), then stretch out the other end and sit down across from him or her. Then, while the person helping holds his or her end of the slinky still, move your end slightly from side to side. What happens? The motion creates ‘waves” that move down the slinky towards your helper.

Hold your end of the slinky still and let the person on the other side move his or her end and watch what happens to the waves. What happens to the waves if you both move your end at the same time? Sound waves travel in only one direction at a time, just like they do on the slinky.

This activity requires chewing and so could be either done during a meal or else as an experiment. To learn more about sound, chew a bite of food, listen to the sound it makes, and compare the sounds made by soft foods and hard or crunchy foods. Try bananas, bread, crackers, chips, carrots, etc. Do you think the sounds will be louder or quieter if you cover your ears with your hands while chewing? Try it out.

The sounds we hear while chewing are actually louder when our ears are covered. Do you know why? There is a tube that connects each ear to your nose and throat called a Eustachian Tube. When you plug your ears from the outside, you can still hear sounds from inside of your mouth through this tube. Everything you hear sounds louder because the noises from outside your ears are being blocked out.

Take a Walk!

For the last of the 5 senses science experiments, you’ll be taking a walk. You can walk around your neighborhood, or even just explore your backyard, or you could make a trip to a park, with an adult. What sounds do you hear on your walk? What do you see? Touch the things around you – are they smooth or rough? What is the weather like – is it hot or cold? What things do you smell on your walk?

Can you chew food with your nose or smell a flower with your ears? No, of course you can’t! Each of the senses are uniquely designed. We see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our tongue, and feel with our hands and skin. You shouldn’t stick anything you find from your walk in your mouth, but you can learn about the other four senses – sight, hearing, smell, and touch. How did those four senses make your walk better? Was there anything you saw or touched that you didn’t like? When you get home, draw a picture list of all the things you saw, heard, smelled, and felt on this worksheet .

Lessons for the 5 Senses Science Experiments

The 5 senses.

As humans, we have five tools that help us explore the world around us – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin gather a lot of information about the world; they help protect us and help us enjoy life! Not everyone is born with all of these senses. Some people are born blind, or without being able to hear. Usually they learn to use the senses they do have better than people who have all five senses. A person who is blind may have an extra-good sense of hearing, for example. Some people also lose their sight or hearing as they get older.

Our vision is the strongest sense. As soon as you open your eyes every morning, you can see the things around you. You can watch a movie, or see a beautiful sunset, or run and play outside because of your eyes. How do our eyes work? We see color and movement because light enters our eyes and forms a pattern.

The little dark circle in the center of each of your eyes lets light in. It is called a pupil.

If you are in a dark place where no lights at all are on, can you see anything? No, you can’t, because our eyes need light to be able to see!

Once the light goes in, it hits a part inside at the back of your eye that is very sensitive to light. This part is called the retina. When light hits the retina, it makes an upside-down picture of whatever you are looking at.

The picture is sent to the brain through the optic nerve.  Nerves are tiny parts in your body that act as messengers. They send signals to your brain of what they can feel, or sense. Together, the many parts inside our body that sense what is around us are called the nervous system .

When the brain receives the picture from your eyes it gets turned around very quickly so that you see it the right way instead of upside-down!

This happens automatically whenever your eyes are open. Seeing is like breathing; you don’t even have to think about it, but you do it all the time!

If you look at your eyes in a mirror, you will see eyelids and eyelashes which protect your eyes by keeping dust out.

Every time you blink (about once every six seconds) your eye is working to keep out bits of dirt and dust so tiny you can’t even see them.

Another important sense is hearing. Our ears allow us to enjoy things like being outside, talking with our friends, and listening to music.

Being able to hear also helps protect us from danger, for example, we can hear if a car is coming when we are crossing the street.

A human with normal hearing can tell the difference between 1500 sounds!

Our brain is able to pick out really high sounds and really low sounds. If you have a piano or keyboard, try playing the lowest note, and then the highest. The piano has 88 sounds – our ears are able to pick up a much wider range of sounds, from soft to loud, low and high. We are able to hear the chirping of an insect on a summer’s day, and the clashing of cymbals at a band concert.

Sound is caused when objects vibrate (move back and forth very quickly).

Vibrations create sound waves that can travel in all different directions through air, water, and lots of other materials.

When sound waves are spread out, the sound we can hear is quiet. However, when they are clumped together, the sound is much louder. When sound waves go into your ear, they hit your eardrum and make it vibrate. The tiny vibrations move through your ear like a light shining through a long tunnel until they get to some nerves at the end of your ear.

The nerves take them to your brain where they turn into the sound that you hear!

The third lesson of our 5 senses science experiments focuses on smell. Did you know that without our noses we couldn’t enjoy things like our favorite meal cooking, or a bouquet of flowers?

Our nose also helps us know what we are eating.

This happens because as we chew our food, air is flowing from our mouth to the back of our throat.

When it reaches our throat, some air reaches the back of our nose. Our nose picks up the smell, and the signals are sent to the brain.

The full flavor (whether you like the food or not) is “tasted” by your nose as well as your mouth!

Our tongue can pick out four types of tastes – bitter, sour, sweet, and salty.

We can taste because of the tiny bumps called taste buds that are all over our tongue, and the top (or roof) of our mouth.

Taste buds are connected to nerves in the tongue, and they pick up the signals that are sent to the brain so you can taste what you are eating.

The inside of our mouth can also feel the foods we are eating, so if you don’t like a food, it might not be the flavor, but the texture that “tastes” gross.

Our skin is very sensitive to what it comes in contact with. All over our skin are tiny receptors that are connected to nerves.

These receptors are spread all over our body, allowing us to feel, but there are more receptors on our hands and face then anywhere else.

Our hands are able to act like a second pair of eyes, providing a detailed picture for the brain.

Our sense of touch is important in many ways. One way it protects us is by setting off reflexes .

Have you ever tried to grab something that was really hot, and then quickly let go? Your senses told your body it was hot, and you reacted very quickly, even before your brain realized it felt hot.

Our sense of touch allows us to enjoy things like petting a cat or dog, and running through the sprinkler on a hot day.

Science Words for 5 Senses

Nerves  – tiny parts in your body that send messages to your brain about what they sense, allowing you to sense things.

Nervous System  – all of the nerves in your body connect to your spinal cord (which run through your backbone), which connects to your brain. This very complex system is what allows you to sense things.

Sound Waves  – tiny back and forth movements, called vibrations, that can travel through air and other things like fabric and water. Sound waves are usually blocked by solid objects, such as walls.

Printable Worksheet – 5 Senses Science Projects

Use this worksheet with the “Take a Walk!” activity for your 5 Senses Science Projects.

Afterwards, your kids or students can make a picture list of all the things they remember from their 5 senses science experiments walk.

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September 19, 2019

7 effective ways to teach my five senses.

Teaching all about the five senses is always one of my favorite science topics. Plus, five senses activities are always so hands-on and fun to implement. Because it’s usually taught at the beginning of the year, I love seeing how my budding scientists learn how to use science tools, implement their interactive science notebooks, and finally stop eating things during science experiments. 

With the endless amount of activities to pick from, it can be overwhelming trying to choose what to include in lesson plans for kindergarten and first grade students who might still be new to science. I love fun science activities, but I knew fun wasn’t enough. They also needed to be based upon standards, be effective at helping students learn, and help students master the content.

I decided to put together some of the best ways to engage students and help them learn through five senses activities to help you plan the best unit for your class. 

If you want your five senses unit to be laid out for you – teaching plan, teacher resources, and student resources – check out the Our Five Senses unit. Everything you’ll need (plus some bonus resources and activities) is included!

1. Incorporate songs and movement. 

Music and movement always help keep active children engaged. I love using songs to introduce and reinforce topics and make learning stick. These songs are fun and appropriate for kindergarten through second grade. (Just remember to always preview media to be sure it’s a good fit for your class.)

• The Five Senses Song by Silly School Songs
• Five Senses Song by the Kiboomers
• 5 Senses Sing Along by Mr. R’s Songs for Teaching

2. Implement hands-on five senses activities.

Activities that get students moving and actually practice using their senses are the perfect way to introduce the senses. They’re also perfect to let students investigate with their five senses. When I teach the five senses, I like to isolate each one with an activity. 

The five senses unit has an activity to help your scientists explore each of their senses. It has detailed teacher directions and a student recording page for each of the five senses. 

3. Use anchor charts to make learning visual.

One great benefit of anchor charts is that when you’re making them, students are engaged in writing with you. Anchor charts make the learning process visible, emphasize literacy in the classroom, and help connect prior learning to current learning. Students use them so much that they can always tell when you move on or take one down. 

I have two must-make anchor charts as part of the five senses activities I do. The five senses unit has them, teacher directions, and all of the pieces you’ll need to make them yourself. 

4. Include activities for interactive notebooks. 

Do you use interactive notebooks in science? My students and I always loved them. Writing about science has so many benefits: 

• Supports your ELLs by giving them more practice with new vocabulary
• Helps streamline and clarify students’ thinking
• Gives students practice communicating about their learning and asking questions

Flip books, pocket book sorts, graphic organizers like KWL charts , and accordian books are a few of my go-to interactive notebook pieces. Our Five Senses has flip books already done for you – one for each sense. These five senses activities are the perfect way to integrate writing and science. You can also find some helpful tips for interactive notebooks HERE . 

5. Use read alouds. 

Interactive read alouds can help build students’ background knowledge, provide visual support for your English Language Learners, and introduce academic vocabulary. Using science read alouds also helps you integrate science throughout the day. Some great read alouds options for five senses include:

• My 5 Senses by Aliki
• I Hear a Pickle: and Smell, See, Touch, & Taste It, Too! by Rachel Isadora
• Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr 
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.

You can download a mega list of science read alouds for the whole year for free HERE . 

6. Integrate the five senses concepts with literacy. 

One of the best ways to help students master science concepts and engage them in learning is to integrate science with literacy. Reading and writing about science topics throughout the day provides students more opportunities to interact with the new academic vocabulary and see how science topics fit into the world in an authentic way.

Like I mentioned, I use read alouds, anchor charts, and interactive notebooks to get students reading and writing about science. But I also use shared reading and mini-books to reinforce the five senses learning. (Tips on how to implement shared reading HERE ).

The shared reading poem in the Our Five Senses unit is used every day. I use it to teach sight words, vocabulary, rhyming words, fluency, and science content. The mini-book is perfect to complete together and have students put in their book boxes. They can keep reading it and reviewing content all year long. 

7. Use the scientific method to complete a five senses science experiment.

If you want to get a group of 22 primary grade students excited for five senses, set up a science experiment. It’s amazing how eager they are to learn and follow the directions, test predictions, and figure out results. I love to use the scientific method even with the youngest scientists. To help you get started, you can get your own FREE scientific method posters HERE . 

I included a full science experiment for students to explore their sense of sight. You probably already have the materials you’ll need in your classroom. The Our Five Senses unit has 

• detailed teacher directions
• student directions with pictures
• student recording pages

You’ll be completely set to implement an engaging science experiment with this unit. 

I’d encourage you to think about these effective ways to teach all about the five senses when planning your five senses activities. You know your learners and their needs, so incorporate the activities that will best help them learn and master these science standards. 

If you want the entire unit put together for you, organized in an easy way to understand, and include everything you’ll need for the week, just shop my post in my TpT store. 

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Our Five Senses Unit This unit includes:

• Unit Teaching Plan
• Teacher Tips
• Teaching Posters
• 14 Five Senses Activities
• Science Experiment
• Unit Assessment 
• Anchor Charts
• Literacy Activities and Resources (shared reading poem, read aloud suggestions, phonics activities, mini-book)

Science for August This bundle will have you set for science for August with three units: Staying Healthy, Our Five Senses, and Being a Scientist. 

First Grade Science for the Year Be set for the entire year of science with this deeply discounted bundle. 

FREE Scientific Method Posters These posters are perfect to display to remind students how to implement the scientific method.

Happy Teaching,

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I’m a K-1 teacher who is passionate about making lessons your students  love  and that are  easy to implement  for teachers.  Helping teachers like you navigate their way through their literacy block brings me great joy. I am a lifelong learner who loves staying on top of current literacy learning and practices. Here, you’ll find the tools you need to move your K-2 students forward!

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Thanks for sharing these senses ideas! I’m changing them up to make them work for my grade 1s online!

YAY! I am so glad you found them helpful to spark some ideas for you!

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Using our 5 senses

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5 senses worksheets: what do we touch, see, hear, smell and taste?

Students identify which senses are best used to sense particular objects . For example, fresh baked bread would be most closely associated with the sense of smell.

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Preschool Five Senses Activities

July 7, 2014 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: Looking for preschool five senses activities? This collection includes fun ideas that encourage young children to explore in a variety of ways!

When you are putting together activities for your preschoolers , how can you make them a multi-sensory experience?

How can you add five senses activities   to your everyday life, at home and at school?

Using our five senses strengthens our everyday experiences.  It helps us understand the world around us.

• What noises did you hear?
• What is it you saw?
• What did it smell like?
• Did you like the taste?
• How did it feel?

Think of this when you are planning preschool activities for the 5 senses. It will make them much more meaningful, building cognitive skills. They will have a better understanding of the world around them.

Sense of Touch

Most touch activities involve the hands and feet. Children learn how to communicate with others through touch. Engaging their hands builds their fine motor skills, helping them learn how to do more for themselves, such as writing their names and buttoning their coats.

Press on marbles through a bag and move them all around to paint mittens.

Explore the feeling of cold inside a sensory bin.

Press paper onto shaving cream and paint to make apple prints.

Add nubby balls  to paint for a fun process art activity.

Enjoy the feeling of bubbles and water while handling rubber ducks in a spring sensory bin.

Make your own texture boxes to add to your science area. (Pre-Kinders)

Explore different textures with a sensory high five activity . (Teach Preschool)

Try one of these 5 games to develop the sense of touch. (Childhood 101)

 Sense of Smell

As children are exposed to different smells, they learn more about our environment. They will be able to distinguish between good and bad smells, comfortable and uncomfortable smells.

Paint with herbal tea bags and enjoy the scent at the same time.

Add some sense of smell to your playdough table (after making it yourself).

Add some lemon scent to dyed rice for a fun sunflower sensory table.

Enjoy the smell of cinnamon sticks in a fall apple sensory table.

Gather different types of lotions and compare how they smell – or mix them up! (Hands On As We Grow)

Make your own spice paint for a sense of smell experience at the art table.  (Mama Papa Bubba)

Compare the smell of 2 different flowers during circle time. (No Time for Flashcards)

Read some five senses books . (Play to Learn Preschool)

Put together different smelling bottles . (Things to Share and Remember)

Work on name recognition with this scratch and sniff activity . (Fun-a-Day)

Get outdoors and be creative with scented sidewalk chalk . (Parenting Chaos)

Sense of Sight

Sense of sight activities helps preschoolers learn about their eyes as they explore the world around them.

Create a window decoration that adds lots of color to the room.

Hang colored tissue paper leaves to the window during the fall.

Put together a multi-sensory experiment that includes Jello. (Fun-a-Day)

Make some colorful toilet roll lenses . (Teach Preschool)

Try one of these blindfold games with your children. (Pre-Kinders)

Use cardboard to make color viewers with handles . (Preschool Toolkit)

Sense of Sound

Indoors and outdoors, there are many opportunities for preschools to engage their listening skills.

Use magnets to pick up and listen to pumpkin bells .

Add jingle bells to sticks to create an instrument for the holidays .

Listen to jingle bells as they are mixed with paint.

After reading Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? , go on a sound hunt . (Inspiration Laboratories)

Create the sound of rain with these DIY rain sticks. (Happy Hooligans)

Using the free printable, go on a sound walk . (Buggy and Buddy)

Add bells to paintbrushes and listen to them jingle as you paint. (No Time for Flashcards)

 Sense of Taste

Many events in a child’s life involve food. Sense of taste activities teach preschoolers that the sense of taste and smell are connected.

Put together a sense of taste discovery center . (Teach Preschool)

Make and taste homemade applesauce .

Fill a muffin tin with an assortment of foods – salty, sour, sweet, spicy and bitter. (Create, Play, Travel)

Explore the sense of taste with one of these 15 edible playdough recipes . (Kids Activities Blog)

Encourage your children to describe different foods they taste . (Learn, Play, Imagine)

Use popcorn not only to engage the sense of taste, but all the other senses, too. (I Heart Crafty Things)

Invite your children to try the salt and sugar test . (Pre-Kinders)

Challenge the taste buds while exploring lemon foods . (Fantastic Fun and Learning)

 Five Senses Activity Plans

I’ve teamed up with other early childhood teachers and homeschoolers to put together these hands-on five senses activity plans for toddlers and preschoolers!

Easy to follow activities that include activity modifications and adaptations to meet the needs of all learners.

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About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 25 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

Free Printable The 5 Senses Worksheets for Kindergarten

The 5 Senses worksheets collection offers a variety of free printable resources to help kindergarten science teachers inspire young minds to discover and explore the fascinating world of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.

Explore The 5 Senses Worksheets by Grades

• kindergarten

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Explore printable The 5 Senses worksheets for Kindergarten

The 5 Senses worksheets for Kindergarten are an excellent resource for teachers looking to introduce young students to the fascinating world of Science and Life Science. These engaging and interactive worksheets provide a comprehensive learning experience that covers the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Designed specifically for Kindergarten students, these worksheets help teachers create a strong foundation in Science and Life Science, while also encouraging curiosity and exploration. By incorporating fun activities, colorful illustrations, and age-appropriate content, The 5 Senses worksheets for Kindergarten make it easy for teachers to effectively teach these essential concepts in a way that resonates with their young students.

In addition to The 5 Senses worksheets for Kindergarten, teachers can also utilize Quizizz to further enhance their students' learning experience. Quizizz is an innovative platform that offers a wide range of interactive quizzes, games, and other educational resources, all designed to complement and reinforce the concepts taught in the classroom. By incorporating Quizizz into their lesson plans, teachers can create a more engaging and dynamic learning environment that not only supports the content covered in The 5 Senses worksheets for Kindergarten but also helps students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Furthermore, Quizizz offers a variety of customization options, allowing teachers to tailor the platform to meet the unique needs and learning styles of their Kindergarten students. With Quizizz, teachers can truly unlock the full potential of their Science and Life Science curriculum.

• Language-Learning Through the Five Senses

Use a child's natural curiosity as a way to spark a love of language.

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• Language and Literacy

Young children are naturally curious about the world around them. They touch, feel, see, hear, and taste. Paying attention to what their senses are telling them can spark interaction and teach new words. This can happen anywhere—riding on the bus, walking past a restaurant, while preparing dinner—just about every time and place holds an opportunity for developing language!

How does it feel? Touch is often how children experience the world. Let kids feel certain textures. Then help them give each a name (“Your sweater is really soft” or “The carpet is fuzzy.”).

Breathe deeply. When taking a walk, point out the smells in your world (“Mmm…this bread from the bakery smells fresh! Let’s smell it!”).

Do you see what I see? Even looking out the window together and pointing at what you see is an opportunity for conversation. (Kids’ babbles, coos, and gestures count!)

It’s a matter of taste. Talk about how things taste in your mouth (“Does that juicy watermelon taste sweet?”) This will help build kids’ vocabulary.

Sounds are everywhere. Listen up! When you are out, talk about what you hear (“Do you hear the cars beeping?” “The wind is rattling the branches.”). Helping kids tune in to sounds is also a great way to build listening skills.

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Buzzing About Books

As children grow, they can engage with books (and caring grown-ups!) in special ways.

A Star Reader

There are many steps to reading, and all are important to becoming a great reader. It’s a process!

Grow, Grow, Grow!

A story about Elmo and his daddy using a book to grow a flower.

One More Time

There are lots of different ways to share the same story, again and again!

Tips for Shared Reading with Children Birth to Three

Tips for using reading time to bond with your child and build their language and literacy skills.

Tips for Shared Reading with Children Three to Five

Tips to make shared reading a time for learning and connection.

A Mighty Voice

Finding confidence in the ways that you tell stories will make them even more special to the children you share them with.

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Fall Five Senses Activities (Free Printable)

When I think of the fall season, the 5 senses come to mind right away! Just stop for a moment reading this, close your eyes, take a deep breath,  and think about all the feelings and words that come to mind when October rolls around. Fall is full of the 5 senses, so today we have a fun printable, somewhat crafty fall five senses activity you can use with the kiddos right up to Thanksgiving.

What are the 5 Senses?

If you are going to explore fall and 5 senses, you need to know what they are first! The 5 senses include touch, taste, sound, sight, and smell. These concepts are super easy to explore with junior scientists because we use our 5 senses every day in many ways.

The senses are how we explore and learn about the world around us. Textures and colors ignite our senses of touch and sight. New foods and tasty goodies explore our sense of taste, even if they aren’t so tasty. Smells like peppermint or cinnamon bring back memories or make us feel more in tune with the season or holiday.

The wind rustling the leaves, the waves breaking on the shore, our footsteps walking along a wooded path, or the call of a bird overhead all are fantastic opportunities for listening to our senses!

Tips for Exploring the 5 Senses with Kids

Exploring the five senses in the fall with young kids can be both a playful and educational experience. Here are some creative and engaging activities to help you make the most of this season:

Sight: Fall Color Walk Take a leisurely stroll through a park or nature trail to admire the vibrant fall foliage. Encourage kids to spot different colors, shapes, and sizes of leaves. Bring along a simple color chart or a camera to document their discoveries. Try one of our scavenger hunts.

Touch: Texture Hunt Collect various fall objects like leaves, pinecones, acorns, and bark. Set up a touch-and-feel station where kids can explore the different textures. Encourage them to describe how each object feels – rough, smooth, bumpy, etc.

Taste: Apple Tasting Adventure Visit an orchard for apple picking or the produce aisle in the grocery store. Choose a variety of apple colors and shapes. Back home, have a tasting session with different apple varieties. Discuss the taste, texture, and sweetness levels of each type. You could also make simple apple snacks or a DIY applesauce.

Smell: Scented Spice Playdough Create scented playdough using fall spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Let kids knead and play with the dough, stimulating their sense of smell. Add spices to our no-cook playdough recipe! Or make a batch of cinnamon slime or pumpkin cloud dough !

Hearing: Leaf Pile Jumping Rake up a pile of fallen leaves and let kids jump into them. The rustling sound of the leaves and the soft landing will engage their sense of hearing.

Integrated Activities: Pumpkin Investigation Get a small pumpkin and involve kids in a mini science investigation project. Have them use their senses to observe and describe the pumpkin’s appearance, touch the texture of its skin, and listen to the sound when tapped. Cut open the pumpkin and repeat the investigation with the insides! Roast pumpkin seeds or make a pumpkin treat to engage the sense of taste!

Explore a pumpkin volcano or pumpkin oobleck too!

Artistic Expression: Nature Collages Collect various natural items from the fall environment – leaves, twigs, feathers, and more. Provide a large sheet of paper and some glue, and let kids create their own sensory-rich nature collages. Try our Nature Weaving Project , Nature Brushes , or Nature Mandalas .

Storytelling: Sensory Storytime Choose a fall-themed storybook that engages all the senses. As you read, encourage kids to imagine how the story’s environment would look, feel, smell, sound, and taste. Try this one: Playing Through the Seasons: Crunchy Leaves, Cozy Sweaters by Essie Bell.

Cooking and Baking: Fall Flavors Involve kids in simple cooking or baking activities using fall ingredients like pumpkin, apples, and cinnamon. The process of measuring, mixing, and tasting will stimulate multiple senses. Bake bread in a bag!

Science Experiment: Leaf Chromatography Collect different types of leaves and explore their colors using a chromatography experiment. This hands-on activity lets kids observe the pigments in leaves and see the colors separate.

How To Explore The 5 Senses this Fall

Here’s a simple list of ways to explore the best of the fall season and the five senses with kids of all ages.

• Go on a nature scavenger hunt and think about how many things you can point out that fit each of the 5 senses! Acorns falling, leaves crunching, rough pinecones, fiery red leaves, and the smell of earth! Call out the senses as you walk along.
• Apples, apples, apples… Let’s not eat any of the things we see in nature, but why not pack freshly picked, crunchy,  juicy apples? Have you explored apples with the 5 senses yet? Have you visited an apple orchard yet? There’s so much to see, hear, feel, taste, and smell! How about trying fizzy apple STEAM afterward?
• Clean out a pumpkin! This is a classic activity you probably just do anyway because it’s a fall tradition! You can set up a pumpkin investigation tray , make a pumpkin sensory squish bag , or make slime right inside the pumpkin using all the guts. A great conversation surrounding this simple activity is to incorporate the 5 senses. Maybe a pumpkin treat can be added!
• For sensory learning , you can easily make scented sensory play such as our apple playdough , applesauce oobleck , pumpkin playdough , cinnamon slime , or pumpkin cloud dough . We also have many options for edible play recipes .
• Plan a STEMS-giving for Thanksgiving with the 5 senses and science! Make butter, paint with corn, explore a sensory bin, and more. How about whipping up a spice paint ?
• Plan ahead to the Christmas holiday , you won’t want to miss our Santa’s 5 Senses Lab for kid-friendly ideas.

Take a look at our sensory science list to read more about combining science and sensory play as well engaging the 5 senses.

Free Printable Fall 5 Senses Activity

This simple activity can be shared with a variety of age groups with more or less assistance. Kids can add their own ways to explore the fall season through the senses and get creative with artistic touches!

Click here or on the image below to grab your Mini Fall 5 Senses Pack

More 5 Senses Activities for Kids

Check out our complete list of 5 Senses activities or choose from one below…

• Preschool 5 Senses Sensory Station
• 5 Senses Coloring Pages
• Guess The Object 5 Senses Game
• Pop Rocks and the 5 Senses
• Candy Tasting 5 Senses Activity
• Peeps 5 Senses for Easter
• Apples and the 5 Senses

Fun Fall Activities for Kids

There are many fun fall sensory, science, STEM, and art activities to try! Make sure to look through these fall activity resources for more great ideas to add to your lesson plans this season.

• Fall Science for Kids
• Fall STEM Projects
• Fall Art Activities
• Fall Slime Recipes
• Fall Sensory Play Ideas
• Anatomy of Fall Coloring Pages

Printable 5 Senses Project Pack

Get ready to explore this year with our growing Preschool STEM Bundle .

What’s Included:

There are 12 fun preschool themes to get you started. This is an ” I can explore” series!

Each unit contains approximately 15 activities, with instructions and templates  as needed. Hands-on activities are provided to keep it fun and exciting. This includes sensory bins, experiments, games, and more! Easy supplies keep it low cost, and book suggestions add to the learning time. 

~ Projects to Try Now! ~

The Best Examples Of The 5 Senses And Descriptive Writing

Using the 5 senses in writing can deeply immerse readers in scenes and stories by creating more vivid imagery in their minds. It’s a skill that can elevate books to a higher level. But so often we writers find ourselves lured into the trap of relying on sight and sound. Relying on a narrow range of sensory language isn’t always enough to bring a story to life. We can inject so much more into our stories simply by utilizing sensory details in our writing.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at our sensory organs, why we use vivid writing that appeals to the senses, look at the 5 senses and descriptive writing examples, and ways we can use each sense to elevate our stories to the next level. 

Many people experience things through smell, touch, and taste. So appealing to the senses in our writing will enrich our tales and prose with vivid imagery, which is often used to help the reader feel immersed and engaged. 

In fact, the oft-forgotten 5 senses are some of the most powerful forms of description, things that can enrich a story and give it life.

And, as we’ll see below, using a sensory description has an incredible ability to connect with us on a psychological level.

Let’s dive in. 

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What Are The 5 Senses In The Context Of Writing?

Why are the five senses important in writing, how to use the 5 senses in writing, the power of sensory description, what are the five sensory organs, imagery and the 5 senses, the 5 senses and descriptive writing examples, 5 senses writing checklist, examples of a descriptive paragraph using sensory details, exercises to help you use the 5 senses in writing, a list of helpful adjectives for the five senses, frequently asked questions (faq) on the 5 senses in writing.

This may seem like a straightforward question, but it’s always best to cover the basics before advancing to more technical points.

This style of prose is essentially writing that employs the five senses to create mental images for the reader.

For example, if you want to create a vivid image of a beach, you may describe the smell of seaweed or the grainy texture of sand. 

In drawing upon these familiar sensations, we can open the portal wider for our readers to step into the scene, to feel what it’s like to be there. It’s a key part of creative writing in respect of description and something that can elevate your stories. 

So that’s what the 5 senses in writing are—they empower your descriptions and help draw readers into the story. Let’s look more at why using them is important.

Here’s a quick video explainer with lots of handy examples:

Using your five senses in your writing is an incredibly powerful way to immerse your reader in the tale.

The more the reader can understand what it’s like to be in your character’s shoes at that precise moment, be it fleeing a demon or marching to war, knowing how it feels and smells like, as well as the visual and audio descriptions, can elevate stories to a whole new level. It quite simply makes it more enjoyable to read.

From a writing perspective, incorporating each of the five senses in your writing at appropriate moments is something your readers will love.

From the perspective of the fantasy writer specifically, using the 5 senses is a terrific way to reveal the details created during your world building process.

This is especially useful when you’re trying to convey unique imagery or something that’s altogether alien to the reader. It’s something I used a lot when writing Pariah’s Lament and readers loved it. This is just one of the many 5 senses examples you’ll find below. 

If you re-read some of your favourite books there’ll no doubt be passages where the writer employs a sight and smell or taste or touch to great descriptive effect. Oftentimes they employ simple but effective techniques (which we’ll cover below) that draw you deeper into the scene, so much so that you feel as if you’re there. 

Often some of our favourite books are those that use to great affect the five senses. Books that transport us to new worlds and take us on epic adventures. And so often it’s the vivid descriptions that draw us in and help us walk amongst the characters.

We’ll look at some examples of the 5 senses in writing below that illustrate just how effective they can be further on below. But first, let’s look at why this is all so important.

Achieving Vivid Writing That Appeals To The Senses

If you want to learn how to achieve vivid writing that appeals to the senses, here are some quick tips:

• Practise – it sounds simple but one of the best ways to get used to including the 5 senses in your writing is to practise. Below, you can find lots of handy exercises that can help you sharpen your writing skills.
• Reading – another very effective method of sharpening your usage of the five senses in your writing is to simply read the works of top-class authors. These talented writers can use small details that appeal to the senses and immerse you in the story. 
• Explore – to boost your vocabulary when describing scenes, characters and feelings with the senses, it helps to go out and explore the world and absorb what it is you’re trying to convey. For example, if you need to describe the feeling of the bark of a tree, going out and examining and touching the different trees around you can help you come up with ideas for describing textures, smells and unique visual descriptions. 

The 5 Senses And Writing About Feelings And Emotions

It’s difficult to describe how a character feels. People are complex beings and at the best of times, we can’t make sense of how we think and feel about a given thing. 

When writing, using the 5 senses can open up doors into the minds of our characters. In utilising them, we can avoid simply telling the reader what our character is feeling, (like, “he felt sad”) and instead, we can suggest or show it through the likes of body language, like how their shoulders are (sagging or raised).

Here are some more examples of the 5 senses when describing emotion:

• Sight – If, for example, your character is feeling a little down, you could focus on describing the way they interpret the world around them, such as focusing on the grey clouds hanging low in the sky, the wilted flowers in the garden, or the empty chair across the room.
• Sound – Incorporating sounds can help to create an atmosphere that resonates with your readers. Let’s say your character is feeling anxious. You could describe the ticking clock, the distant sirens, the creaking floorboards—things that increase the tension.
• Touch – A powerful method is to use tactile descriptions to help your readers feel what the character is feeling. For example, if your character is feeling nervous, you can describe their clammy hands, the beat of their heart in their ears, the tightness in their chest.
• Taste – Using taste really adds depth to your descriptions of emotion. If your character is feeling joyful, you could describe the sweetness of a ripe strawberry, the richness of a dark chocolate truffle, or the effervescence of champagne bubbles. Linking these things back to memories can also help to trigger a more powerful reaction. For instance, the taste of a an Indian curry that you had the night you proposed to your wife.
• Smell – Scent can also help to create a visceral experience for your readers, one that relates to them on a more emotional level. If your character is feeling nostalgic, you can describe the aroma of freshly baked cookies, the salty sea air, or the musky scent of old books.

By using the five senses in your writing you can create a multi-dimensional experience for your readers, making your characters and their emotions more real and relatable. Let’s take a look at just how powerful sensory details are when it comes to painting a picture in the reader’s mind. 

We’ve covered a lot about using sensory descriptions and how they can elevate your writing to the next level. However, there are a lot of scientific studies that back up the theory.

For instance, in a study published back in 2011 by The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, it was found that we process certain words faster than others if there is a sensory experience attached to them.

Such studies aren’t new. In fact, Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976) examined how fundamental “word-percept associations” are to our language. This was expanded upon n a 2003 study by Rakova who emphasised a very important point—that the purpose of language is to express how we feel, what we see, hear, smell and taste.

Another study on sensory linguistics (which looks at how language relates to the senses), published by the University of Birmingham , examined humanity’s dependence on perceptions and how we interact with the world through feeling, seeing, tasting, hearing and smelling.

What we can see here is a growing understanding of the power and influence of a piece of sensory description. By examining these studies, writers can find a whole new appreciation for using the 5 senses in writing.

Before we dive into looking at the 5 senses in a writing context, let’s look at what the five sensory organs are:

• Special receptors in the skin that enable us to touch and feel

Combined, our five senses enable us to learn, experience and create memories. Pepsi Max, for example, always reminds me of my history lessons in college—I’d drink a can during every lesson. Think of songs too. They have an incredible ability to transport us back to moments in our past. Let’s explore things in more detail.

If you’d like to learn more about the basics surrounding the 5 senses, see more examples, or learn how to incorporate sensory description in your writing, see this quick video.

Are There More Than 5 Senses?

Now, something you may be wondering about is whether or not there are more than the 5 classic senses. It is, in fact, believed that there is more than touch, taste, sound, sight, smell. These golden 5 were defined by Aristotle because he could relate them to sensory organs. They are sometimes known as the “five senses folk model”.

But it depends on the manner in which you define a sense.

Newer approaches look at the number of sensory organs we have. And many academics now counter the sixth sense as the vestibular system . This relates to the inner ear and the impact it has on our balance and vision.

But other academics have gone further than this. Some tweak the definition to include sensory receptors. Now the skin, for instance, has at least four sensory receptors, relating to pain, temperature, touch and body awareness (otherwise known as proprioception).

So when someone asks how many senses do we have, it’s all a matter of definition. You can check out this awesome video below by SciShow which explains things in more detail.

Perhaps the main one of the five senses, sight often receives information first and therefore forms our initial judgements.

When it comes to using sight in writing, our stories and characters are often guided by this prime form of description. We describe what our characters see.

However, it would be nigh impossible to describe every aspect of a scene, and even if you did achieve it, nigh impossible to read.

Some of the most acclaimed writers, Charles Dickens, in particular, approached it by picking the right details. The little things that tell us everything. Let’s look at an example of the sense of sight in writing from Great Expectations :

“There was a bookcase in the room; I saw, from the backs of the books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, trials, acts of parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded lamp: so he seemed to bring the office home with him in that respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work.”

This is Jagger’s office. Though he doesn’t feature, we’ve gleaned much about who he is from details like the types of books upon the shelves and the paper-filled table, suggesting he lives a busy, professional life.

Colour is another fantastic tool when it comes to sight. Dickens was known for using colours to portray emotions or themes, such as red for frustration or anger, black for death, white for purity or goodness. Using colour, particularly with themes and the premise , can add extra layers to a story.

We explore some more 5 senses examples below to give you some ideas when it comes to sight.

Writing Prompt

Stand in the middle of your bedroom. Look all around you. Make notes of every little detail you see. Colours, shapes. Crumbs or dust on the floor. The more attentive you can be the better.

Pick out things that could relate to characterisation. The books on a shelf perhaps—what kind of books are they? Are there empty glasses beside your bed, dishes too? All of this helps to build interesting imagery, as well as contribute to other elements of the story, in this instance, characterization .

Sound is incredibly important when it comes to using the 5 senses in our writing. Dialogue dominates many stories, but so often little attention is paid to how characters sound when they talk. It’s strange when you think about how unique people sound, and a person’s voice makes such a difference to how we form views of them.

Something I learned not so long ago is that ducks don’t quack. They tend to grunt or even cackle. It’s easy to assume how things sound, but sometimes what we assume is wrong.

It’s always worth taking the time to research. In doing so you may find new and original ways to describe the sound. Using metaphors and similes, particularly if the sound is unusual, is a great way to bring clarity to descriptions.

Another often overlooked thing is silence. Silence is an excellent tool to set the tone or build an atmosphere or tension . A noiseless forest. A still, foggy street. Eerie.

Either using yourself or ideally, your character, place yourself in a location in which things are happening around you—a park, for instance. Close your eyes and listen.

Make a note of every little sound you hear, from tweeting birds to jackhammers digging up roads. If you can, make a note of how different sounds make you feel. Do fireworks startle you, for instance? Then think about why they could startle you or your character.

Of all the five senses, touch is, in my view, one of the most powerful yet underrated ones. If you can convey touch in an effective way, you’ll reap the rewards.

The scope of this sense depends on the nature of the scene, but imagine, for example, walking barefoot through a forest. The softness of moss between your toes, the cool slime of mud, the pokes and scratches of sticks and stones. Such details can draw readers deeper into the story.

We’ll look at some sensory writing exercises below, but as a brief writing prompt now, close your eyes and pick something up. Describe how that object feels. What features does it have? The texture? Sturdiness? Width? Weight?

These little details can make all the difference when it comes to incorporating the 5 senses in your writing.

Taste is the more neglected one out of the five sensory organs when it comes to writing. Just like all of the senses, using taste can enrich your story immensely.

How many times have you said the phrase, “It tastes like …”. So many of our memories are tied to tastes. Like I said before, Pepsi Max always reminds me of history classes in college. Which tastes trigger memories for you?

If this happens to us, it happens to your characters too. It’s a great thing to include within your characterization process.

Like smell, taste can serve as a trigger for memories. For example, a husband who shared a love for apple turnovers baked by his deceased wife is reminded of her whenever he eats one.

Taste can also trigger emotions. There’ve been times when I’ve eaten food that tasted so good I bounced with glee in my chair.

A fun one. Head down to your kitchen and finding something to eat that has a bit of texture. Close your eyes, take a bite. Focus closely as you chew, as the food rolls around your mouth, over your tongue and down your throat. How does it taste? How does it make you feel?

We, at last, arrive at smell, though its place is no reflection on its importance when it comes to using the 5 senses in our writing.

The power of smells cannot be underestimated. We smell things all of the time and those scents help to shape our impressions. What can you whiff right now?

A smell helps us to form a judgement on things, such as whether something’s okay to eat. And crucially, smells can trigger vivid memories and emotions, vital tools to any writer.

Here’s one of my favorite 5 senses examples for using smell in writing from James Joyce’s Ulysses :

“ Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”  

How do you describe the smell of rain in creative writing?

The technical term for the smell of rain is “petrichor”.

Rain brings with it a freshness, a crispness, an earthiness. It awakens the scents of other things like dry soil, flowers and grass. It’s something I turn to a lot when writing fantasy , especially in those scenes where characters are moving through rich, rural landscapes. 

Similar to the task above which involves a trip out to a busy place, like a park, sit down and have a good sniff. Another good place to try is a coffee shop. Lots of smells of roasting coffee and baking cakes in there.

Importantly, think about where those smells lead you in your mind. Do they trigger memories? Do associated words pop into your mind? From your character’s perspective, this is what their experience would be like too.

The main aim of using the 5 senses is to create imagery in the minds of readers. That is the ultimate aim of writing fiction—to transfer the thoughts and ideas from the writer to the reader. 

It’s arguably the most magical thing about writing, the ability for an author to connect with a reader thousands of miles away or hundreds of years into the future. 

So it’s up to the writer to create vivid imagery and the 5 senses is one way of achieving that. 

There are actually specific terms for the types of imagery that each sensory organ can conjure. Here they are:

• Visual Imagery – this, of course, relates to sight
• Olfactory Imagery – this fancy word relates to smell
• Auditory Imagery – you may have guessed, this one relates to the description of sounds
• Gustatory Imagery – this one’s all about taste
• Tactile Imagery – and this final one is all about touch, an often-forgotten sense

5 senses imagery, in short, is a powerful tool in a writer’s arsenal. Let’s look at some examples of how it’s used in practice. 

Let’s move on to look at the 5 senses and descriptive writing examples. As we’ve seen above, vivid imagery is often used to help the reader feel immersed in the story. So in this section, I’ve provided some from some bestselling books that make great use of the 5 senses.

“The tearing of flesh, as though a butcher were yanking meat from a flank. The bubbling of liquids and the soft rasping of the cutting tools.” Tooth & Nail , Ian Rankin

“Stars spun across his vision and his head felt as if it were about to burst… With difficulty, Hanno undid the chinstrap and eased off his helmet. Cool air ruffled his sweat-soaked hair.” Hannibal: Fields of Blood Ben Kane

“A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not.” A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin

“It was dark and dim all day. From the sunless dawn until evening the heavy shadow had deepened, and all hearts in the City were oppressed. Far above a great cloud streamed slowly westward from the Black Land, devouring light, borne upon a wind of war; but below the air was still and breathless, as if all the Value of Anduin waited for the onset of a ruinous storm.” The Return Of The King , JRR Tolkien.

This last one for me is a great example of a descriptive paragraph using the five senses. From the off, you not only get a vivid image of the setting (dark, dim, sunless dawn), but you can feel what it’s like to be there on an emotional level (hearts in the City were oppressed). Our senses are further teased with the description of a “still and breathless” air. 

If you’d like to find more sensory description examples, I recommend doing this simple exercise:

Pick up any book that you see, one ideally that you don’t mind marking with a pen or highlighter. Next, scan the pages, looking for descriptive scenes. Whenever you see a sentence that refers to any of the five senses, highlight it in some way.

The benefit of doing this is that you get examples from a variety of different writers, each with their own clever way of making their exposition more immersive.

Something you may notice is that many of them employ metaphors and similes to help you build a visual image in your mind. This is a very effective way of using the 5 senses in writing. You could say things like:

• The water smashed into the ground like the tide hitting a rocky coast
• A squeal filled the air like a pig fearing slaughter
• It smelled like an overflowing latrine pit sat in the baking sun

You can learn more about using metaphors and similes in this guide on writing prose.

More Examples Of Descriptive Writing Using The 5 Senses

If you’re looking for more 5 senses examples for your writing, one of the best things you can do is to read books that pay particular attention to this. One of the standout books that explore this is Blindness by José Saramago.

There’s no shortage of sensory language examples out there for you to study. From books to writing guides like this, there are plenty of helpful resources you can learn from. 

Something I’ve done to improve my use of the 5 senses in my writing is to include them within the planning process. It’s good to save it until the end when you’ve plotted out your story or chapter, however.

What I do is read over the plan and try and place myself in the scenes. Working my way through each sense, I list everything that pops into my head.

• It’ll be unlikely that you need to spend too much time on sight , but taking the time to consider things in detail can provoke new and unique ideas. What little details can be included? Remember the power of specificity.
• Next, onto sounds . Like sights, it’s unlikely you’ll need to spend too much time on this but it’s always helpful to consider the likes of characters’ voices and any usual sounds that could be featured.
• Smells . When it comes to smells a good starting point is to list everything that comes to mind, even mere whiffs, which can be the most telling of all. Smells can provoke memories and emotions too, like the smell of perfume could remind a character of their dead lover, and that leaves you open to describe emotions.
• What can your character touch or feel? How does the hilt of the sword feel in your character’s fingers? How does the touch of a vivacious woman feel to your lonely character? What information can be gleaned from the manner of a handshake?
• Lastly, what tastes , if any, can you include? Is your character eating? Can they taste blood after being punched in the cheek? Do they enter a room where the smell is so foetid they can taste it?

I wanted to provide you with a few examples of descriptive paragraphs that use sensory details. Examine how they elevate the scene by drawing you deeper. Each little detail paints a more vivid picture, such that you can almost feel yourself there, experiencing it yourself. This is a real skill when it comes to creative writing, but it’s definitely one you can learn and master. 

Let’s look at our first 5 senses paragraph example:

The mud of the road sucked at her tattered leather boots, a quagmire after incessant rains. Autumn circled like a hawk. The wind grabbed at her woollen green cloak and homespun dress. The hand-me-downs from her cousins never fitted, always too wide at the waist and short of length. She pulled her cloak tight about her, bundling it around her hands to keep away the biting chill.

The ringing gave way to those crashes and bangs, each one coming with the beat of his heart. His eyes flickered open. Slate-grey clouds hung above. Dust hovered in the air, rocks and debris showered down upon him. He raised his throbbing head and looked around. Men and women, hands over their ears, cowered down behind the crenellations of the wall, fear etched upon their faces, consuming their eyes, paralyzing their bodies. A few defiant individuals continued to loose arrows. For many, it was the last they shot. The Karraban thunder smashed the parapets to bits, obliterated siege engines, battered the cliff behind them and knocked from it great chunks of rock that tumbled down to crush those below. The ringing in Jem’s ears eased enough for him to hear the screams. They became the backdrop to the rumbling of the Karraban thunder. Only one thought entered Jem’s mind: flee.

The bells rang loud and panicked across Yurrisa. Hidden in the shadows of the abandoned warehouse, Edvar and the others lay in wait. He peered through a crack in a boarded window at the cobbled street. Echoing along it came a shout. Another. Steps rushed toward him, and into view burst a group of soldiers, breaths billowing mist in the cold morning air.

Laughter rippled from the table behind Edvar. The three men were tanners, the least difficult of all working men to identify: stained clothes and hands and stinking of a peculiar cocktail of rotten flesh and mint. They rubbed themselves with the latter to mask the stench of the former. Nobody could bear their presence long enough to tell them it didn’t work.

As you can see, these examples use each of the five senses to great effect. If you’re curious where these came from, I pinched them from Pariah’s Lament .

Here are a few useful exercises to get into the swing of using the senses. The more you practice, the more it’ll become ingrained in the way you write and that’s why it’s one of my favorite writing tips of all!

• One place, one sense . As the title suggests, think of a place and describe everything you can using just one sense. Challenge yourself. Pick a sense you feel you struggle with. Or do one sense, then a different one. 
• Describe an object using the 5 senses. This is a nice simple exercise. Pick one object and describe it using all of your senses. Examples of objects could be chocolate (so you can taste) or a bottle of perfume (for the smell!).
• Close your eyes and pick an object up. This one was mentioned above, but it’s a powerful tool. Jot down everything you can think of.
• Pick your favourite food and eat! This one’s a bit more fun. Take chocolate for example. Savour each bite and write down everything, from taste to texture, the sounds of it breaking in your mouth, and importantly, how it makes you feel.
• Pick something alien and try to use sensory descriptions. This is a great way to challenge your use of the 5 senses because you have to create everything from scratch and to a whole new level of detail. So if you’re a sci-fi writer, this could be a great way to learn how to describe a spaceship in writing. 

Here’s a brilliant visual exercise too which I highly recommend trying. It’s quick, and easy and really does hone your skills when it comes to using the 5 senses in writing.

1. Walk And Write

This exercise I call walk and write . Take a notepad and write five headings: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. The next time you go out, even if it’s just to the shop on the corner, write down everything you experience. The touch of the rain or breeze, how the pavement feels underfoot, snippets of passing conversation you hear, the whistle of birds, how that warm and crispy sausage roll tastes. *Warning* You may look odd stopping all the time.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

• Take a walk outside and observe your surroundings. Use your senses to take note of what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Write down your observations.
• Choose one of the things you noticed on your walk and use it as a prompt for your writing. For example, if you noticed the sound of birds chirping, write a descriptive paragraph that captures that sound.
• As you write, be sure to use sensory language to bring your description to life. Instead of simply saying “I heard birds chirping,” try something like “The melody of birdsong filled my ears, each chirp a delicate note in a symphony of nature.”
• Repeat this exercise for each of the senses. Choose a different observation each time and challenge yourself to use vivid sensory details to paint a picture with your words.

2. Write A Short Story With The 5 Senses

One of the most effective ways that you can sharpen your sensory description writing is to write a short story with the 5 senses. 

The way it works is simple. Plan out your story—characters, plotting, theme—and then when it comes to the writing, you’re only permitted to use the five senses. 

It can help to think of a story in which you’d likely use the sensory organs more than usual. Let’s look at a few writing prompts:

• Your protagonist awakens in a dark cave. It’s cold and damp. They must figure out what’s happened and find their way out.
• Your protagonist is fleeing through a forest. What are they running from? What awaits them up ahead?
• Your character is upon a ship and is knocked overboard. How do they survive in the turbulent waves?

These are just a few prompts that are specifically designed to help you use the five senses in your writing. Trust me, an exercise like this will have your skillset sharpened in no time.

3. Use 5 Senses Writing Prompts

Here are some 5 senses writing prompts that may help you get started:

• You’re at home, watching TV. You catch the scent of something. Something that makes you mute the TV, look around, stand up. What is it you smell?
• For three days you’ve been travelling alone through the woods. You’re two days from your destination. Tired, weary. And you’re pretty sure something is following you. The sun has long since set. The embers are dying in your fire. And you begin to hear sounds close by…
• You’ve just started a new job. The office is big, labyrinthine. On your way back from lunch on your first day, you get lost. You open a door with stairs leading down. You follow them. Get further lost. And the steps give way. You awake in darkness to the sound of something growling. You reach for your phone, turn on the torch…

There are a few examples of sensory language-based writing prompts for you. See where they take you.

You can never have enough adjectives to help you describe the five senses. Below, you can find a pretty simple list, but it serves as a great starting point. From there you can add some of your own examples of using the 5 senses in descriptive writing. I also have some other helpful writing tools here that you may find useful. 

Below, you can find answers to some commonly asked questions when it comes to sensory descriptions, as well as more descriptive writing examples using the 5 senses.

“The icy wind rattled the ancient shutters upon the windows, stirring a shudder and setting every hair on her body on edge.”

This sentence uses sensory language to describe not just how the setting looks (from the rattling ancient shutters we see it’s an old possibly abandoned house), and crucially, we get a sense of how it feels to be in that setting, which is the main objective. It feels eerie, we feel the cold. We’re spooked. 

Sensory description in fiction writing requires a writer to utilise the 5 senses – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

Incorporating the senses into your writing is simple. First, focus on what your characters can see in the scene. Then, one by one, think about what they can hear, smell, feel and taste. Assort your various descriptions and pick out your most powerful few.

The five senses are often used to draw a reader deeper into the scene, to feel closer to the characters. Writers do this by adding extra details focusing on the likes of touch and smell. This vivid writing that appeals to the senses can help immerse readers in our tales.

The best way is to pick up your favourite book and highlight any sentences or paragraphs that utilise the 5 senses. You’ll then have a bank of sensory details examples to call upon whenever you need them.

A sensory description is one that includes sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Exploring sensory language examples gives you a greater ability to immerse your readers in the story and experience what the characters feel.

If you have any questions or need more examples of the 5 senses in writing, please contact me.

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32 thoughts on “the best examples of the 5 senses and descriptive writing”.

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When writing about the senses, authors should be careful to avoid FILTER words (saw, heard, felt, smelled, tasted) that detract from the scene. Don’t say, “I saw the sparkling water.” Instead, make it more vivid. Leave out “saw.” We know you saw it because you are describing it to us. Tell us instead more of WHAT you are seeing. “The sparkling water bubbled as a creature from below made its way to the surface.” Same goes with using “heard,” “felt,” “smelled,” and “tasted.” Omit those words and describe those senses so people can experience what the character is experience.

Terrific points! Thanks for taking the time to share!

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Thanks for sharing!

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Thanks for the link!

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This was very helpful in as a source.

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Using her senses

This carrier’s call to report a fire helped save a life.

Letter Carrier Terralen Lofton was delivering mail recently in Lafayette, LA, when she heard a popping sound coming from a residence.

She followed the noise and discovered the house was on fire.

Lofton alerted a neighbor, who told her someone was inside the home.

The Postal Service employee called 911 and alerted the customer, who got out safely before firefighters arrived and extinguished the blaze.

According to a TV news report , authorities determined that the fire started in the carport.

“I’m just grateful and I thank God that I was able to not only save the house, but also save a life,” Lofton told the TV station .

Employees featured in “Heroes” receive letters of commendation through the Postmaster General Heroes’ Program. The nomination form is available on Blue.

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After a pro basketball career, this employee became a youth coach

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Weekly highlights

Opinion Need to know now who will win in November? Bad news!

You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

In today’s edition:

• What writers see from their states this election year
• Stop reading presidential election polls!
• Living on the edge in landslide California

Forecasting November, Part I

Seven months from now, if all goes as planned, we will know who’s going to be leading this country for the next four years. But what if, like the impatient toddlers we are, we want to know now ? It certainly doesn’t help for Post staffers to survey our neighbors, here in this bright blue city with its chattering political class on top. We have to look farther afield.

This week, we did just that. Five writers were kind enough to send us election-year postcards , of a sort, from Florida, Washington state, Georgia, Pennsylvania and California. Some are funny, some more grim. They report angry banners, shrugs of ennui and local politicians warning ominously of drug-addled bears (okay, one of the writers is Dave Barry , obviously).

One set of insights comes from nonfiction writer Melissa Fay Greene, who smartly enlisted an Atlanta-area real estate agent to tell her about who’s moving in and how they’re affecting her increasingly purple state. As this agent helps newcomers and Atlantans find homes in the burbs, she has a front-row seat to how the electorate is changing. Some even see Georgia’s swinginess as a draw: One family, she reports, “literally told me that once all the other priorities checked out, they wanted a state where their votes would matter.” Believe me, we Washingtonians get it.

We’ll be checking back with these writers as Election Day approaches, so stay tuned for more of what they’re seeing on the ground.

Forecasting November, Part II

Say you’re not an anecdata kind of person — you want cold, hard numbers. Perhaps you can deduce our future from polls. That’s what a serious person (who, uh, demanded to know the future) would do, right?

Think again, says Jen Rubin . The polls that media outlets keep shoving in your face are way less significant than they sound — she points out one example where a supposed movement in President Biden’s direction is actually all within the margin of error. “Rather than pretend that political gurus can anticipate results,” she counsels, “the media would do better to focus on ‘not the odds, but the stakes,’ as New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen puts it. Not only are the stakes — the fate of democracy — immensely important in 2024, but the odds (the polls) at this stage are virtually meaningless.”

Personally, I think of this as a kind of blessing from Jen. You’re free! Stop reading polls! Depending on your level of Polling Derangement Syndrome, you just got hours of time back between now and the election. So yes, you must live with the uncertainty. You can use all that extra time to fret about the stakes instead .

Change is coming fast to the stunning Pacific coastline of California, where landslides are increasingly imperiling the houses and communities that cling to the cliffs.

In a lyrical guest piece, Jennifer Allen recalls living in Portuguese Bend, the neighborhood now considering that intensive protective plan: “The land had its demands. You deferred to the rattlesnake sheltering in the shade of your porch, gave space to the tarantula crawling on the bookshelf. Wild peacocks had the loudest and final say. … You learned to wait out the strongest storms like the horses in the stables: with patience and civility.”

Admittedly, that description might make you want to move there. But Allen is clear-eyed about the risks we humans are taking by depending on the volatile cliffs to stay beneath our feet, and the greater and greater sums required to keep them there — as if we, not nature, were in charge. Ultimately, she writes, “the land isn’t falling apart. We are.”

Smartest, fastest

• Perry Bacon takes a look at how the religious right has seized control of one of the two major American political parties, even as the nation’s religiosity is distinctly on the wane.
• A dismayed Catherine Rampell weighs in on what she says might be “Trump’s most inflationary and economically destructive idea yet”: intentionally weakening the U.S. dollar .
• Prospective jurors in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial have gotten a long list of questions calculated to weed out people who “have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about former President Donald Trump.” Do such people really exist? asks satirist Alexandra Petri , offering some juror-screening questions of her own .

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

All these months ahead

Who can say which candidate

Falls into the sea

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me , along with any questions/comments/compliments/complaints. We’ll see you tomorrow!

How Yankees’ lineup will change when DJ LeMahieu is back from injured list

• Updated: Apr. 17, 2024, 12:37 p.m. |
• Published: Apr. 17, 2024, 6:30 a.m.

DJ LeMahieu is expcted to begin a rehab assignment in Double-A Somerset on either Thursday or Friday of this week. AP

• Max Goodman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

TORONTO — It’s been exactly one month since DJ LeMahieu suffered a non-displaced fracture in his right foot and the Yankees ’ infielder is confident that he’s ready to return to in-game action.

The plan is for LeMahieu to begin a rehab assignment on either Thursday or Friday of this week, likely starting with Double A Somerset.

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• Open access
• Published: 15 April 2024

Demuxafy : improvement in droplet assignment by integrating multiple single-cell demultiplexing and doublet detection methods

• Drew Neavin 1 ,
• Anne Senabouth 1 ,
• Himanshi Arora 1 , 2 ,
• Jimmy Tsz Hang Lee 3 ,
• Aida Ripoll-Cladellas 4 ,
• sc-eQTLGen Consortium ,
• Lude Franke 5 ,
• Shyam Prabhakar 6 , 7 , 8 ,
• Chun Jimmie Ye 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ,
• Davis J. McCarthy 13 , 14 ,
• Marta Melé 4 ,
• Martin Hemberg 15 &
• Joseph E. Powell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5070-4124 1 , 16  

Genome Biology volume  25 , Article number:  94 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

42 Accesses

Metrics details

Recent innovations in single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) provide the technology to investigate biological questions at cellular resolution. Pooling cells from multiple individuals has become a common strategy, and droplets can subsequently be assigned to a specific individual by leveraging their inherent genetic differences. An implicit challenge with scRNA-seq is the occurrence of doublets—droplets containing two or more cells. We develop Demuxafy, a framework to enhance donor assignment and doublet removal through the consensus intersection of multiple demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods. Demuxafy significantly improves droplet assignment by separating singlets from doublets and classifying the correct individual.

Droplet-based single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies have provided the tools to profile tens of thousands of single-cell transcriptomes simultaneously [ 1 ]. With these technological advances, combining cells from multiple samples in a single capture is common, increasing the sample size while simultaneously reducing batch effects, cost, and time. In addition, following cell capture and sequencing, the droplets can be demultiplexed—each droplet accurately assigned to each individual in the pool [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ].

Many scRNA-seq experiments now capture upwards of 20,000 droplets, resulting in ~16% (3,200) doublets [ 8 ]. Current demultiplexing methods can also identify doublets—droplets containing two or more cells—from different individuals (heterogenic doublets). These doublets can significantly alter scientific conclusions if they are not effectively removed. Therefore, it is essential to remove doublets from droplet-based single-cell captures.

However, demultiplexing methods cannot identify droplets containing multiple cells from the same individual (homogenic doublets) and, therefore, cannot identify all doublets in a single capture. If left in the dataset, those doublets could appear as transitional cells between two distinct cell types or a completely new cell type. Accordingly, additional methods have been developed to identify heterotypic doublets (droplets that contain two cells from different cell types) by comparing the transcriptional profile of each droplet to doublets simulated from the dataset [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. It is important to recognise that demultiplexing methods achieve two functions—segregation of cells from different donors and separation of singlets from doublets—while doublet detecting methods solely classify singlets versus doublets.

Therefore, demultiplexing and transcription-based doublet detecting methods provide complementary information to improve doublet detection, providing a cleaner dataset and more robust scientific results. There are currently five genetic-based demultiplexing [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 16 ] and seven transcription-based doublet-detecting methods implemented in various languages [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Under different scenarios, each method is subject to varying performance and, in some instances, biases in their ability to accurately assign cells or detect doublets from certain conditions. The best combination of methods is currently unclear but will undoubtedly depend on the dataset and research question.

Therefore, we set out to identify the best combination of genetic-based demultiplexing and transcription-based doublet-detecting methods to remove doublets and partition singlets from different donors correctly. In addition, we have developed a software platform ( Demuxafy ) that performs these intersectional methods and provides additional commands to simplify the execution and interpretation of results for each method (Fig. 1 a).

Study design and qualitative method classifications. a  Demuxafy is a platform to perform demultiplexing and doublet detecting with consistent documentation. Demuxafy also provides wrapper scripts to quickly summarize the results from each method and assign clusters to each individual with reference genotypes when a reference-free demultiplexing method is used. Finally, Demuxafy provides a script to easily combine the results from multiple different methods into a single data frame and it provides a final assignment for each droplet based on the combination of multiple methods. In addition, Demuxafy provides summaries of the number of droplets classified as singlets or doublets by each method and a summary of the number of droplets assigned to each individual by each of the demultiplexing methods. b  Two datasets are included in this analysis - a PBMC dataset and a fibroblast dataset. The PBMC dataset contains 74 pools that captured approximately 20,000 droplets each with 12-16 donor cells multiplexed per pool. The fibroblast dataset contains 11 pools of roughly 7,000 droplets per pool with sizes ranging from six to eight donors per pool. All pools were processed by all demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods and the droplet and donor classifications were compared between the methods and between the PBMCs and fibroblasts. Then the PBMC droplets that were classified as singlets by all methods were taken as ‘true singlets’ and used to generate new pools in silico. Those pools were then processed by each of the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods and intersectional combinations of demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods were tested for different experimental designs

To compare the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods, we utilised two large, multiplexed datasets—one that contained ~1.4 million peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 1,034 donors [ 17 ] and one with ~94,000 fibroblasts from 81 donors [ 18 ]. We used the true singlets from the PBMC dataset to generate new in silico pools to assess the performance of each method and the multi-method intersectional combinations (Fig. 1 b).

Here, we compare 14 demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods with different methodological approaches, capabilities, and intersectional combinations. Seven of those are demultiplexing methods ( Demuxalot [ 6 ], Demuxlet [ 3 ], Dropulation [ 5 ], Freemuxlet [ 16 ], ScSplit [ 7 ], Souporcell [ 4 ], and Vireo [ 2 ]) which leverage the common genetic variation between individuals to identify cells that came from each individual and to identify heterogenic doublets. The seven remaining methods ( DoubletDecon [ 9 ], DoubletDetection [ 14 ], DoubletFinder [ 10 ], ScDblFinder [ 11 ], Scds [ 12 ], Scrublet [ 13 ], and Solo [ 15 ]) identify doublets based on their similarity to simulated doublets generated by adding the transcriptional profiles of two randomly selected droplets in the dataset. These methods assume that the proportion of real doublets in the dataset is low, so combining any two droplets will likely represent the combination of two singlets.

We identify critical differences in the performance of demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods to classify droplets correctly. In the case of the demultiplexing techniques, their performance depends on their ability to identify singlets from doublets and assign a singlet to the correct individual. For doublet detecting methods, the performance is based solely on their ability to differentiate a singlet from a doublet. We identify limitations in identifying specific doublet types and cell types by some methods. In addition, we compare the intersectional combinations of these methods for multiple experimental designs and demonstrate that intersectional approaches significantly outperform all individual techniques. Thus, the intersectional methods provide enhanced singlet classification and doublet removal—a critical but often under-valued step of droplet-based scRNA-seq processing. Our results demonstrate that intersectional combinations of demultiplexing and doublet detecting software provide significant advantages in droplet-based scRNA-seq preprocessing that can alter results and conclusions drawn from the data. Finally, to provide easy implementation of our intersectional approach, we provide Demuxafy ( https://demultiplexing-doublet-detecting-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html ) a complete platform to perform demultiplexing and doublet detecting intersectional methods (Fig. 1 a).

Study design

To evaluate demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods, we developed an experimental design that applies the different techniques to empirical pools and pools generated in silico from the combination of true singlets—droplets identified as singlets by every method (Fig. 1 a). For the first phase of this study, we used two empirical multiplexed datasets—the peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) dataset containing ~1.4 million cells from 1034 donors and a fibroblast dataset of ~94,000 cells from 81 individuals (Additional file 1 : Table S1). We chose these two cell systems to assess the methods in heterogeneous (PBMC) and homogeneous (fibroblast) cell types.

Demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods perform similarly for heterogeneous and homogeneous cell types

We applied the demultiplexing methods ( Demuxalot , Demuxlet , Dropulation , Freemuxlet , ScSplit , Souporcell , and Vireo ) and doublet detecting methods ( DoubletDecon , DoubletDetection , DoubletFinder , ScDblFinder , Scds , Scrublet , and Solo ) to the two datasets and assessed the results from each method. We first compared the droplet assignments by identifying the number of singlets and doublets identified by a given method that were consistently annotated by all methods (Fig. 2 a–d). We also identified the percentage of droplets that were annotated consistently between pairs of methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S1). In the cases where two demultiplexing methods were compared to one another, both the droplet type (singlet or doublet) and the assignment of the droplet to an individual had to match to be considered in agreement. In all other comparisons (i.e. demultiplexing versus doublet detecting and doublet detecting versus doublet detecting), only the droplet type (singlet or doublet) was considered for agreement since doublet detecting methods cannot annotate donor assignment. We found that the two method types were more similar to other methods of the same type (i.e., demultiplexing versus demultiplexing and doublet detecting versus doublet detecting) than they were to methods from a different type (demultiplexing methods versus doublet detecting methods; Supplementary Fig 1). We found that the similarity of the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods was consistent in the PBMC and fibroblast datasets (Pearson correlation R = 0.78, P -value < 2×10 −16 ; Fig S1a-c). In addition, demultiplexing methods were more similar than doublet detecting methods for both the PBMC and fibroblast datasets (Wilcoxon rank-sum test: P < 0.01; Fig. 2 a–b and Additional file 2 : Fig S1).

Demultiplexing and Doublet Detecting Method Performance Comparison. a  The proportion of droplets classified as singlets and doublets by each method in the PBMCs. b  The number of other methods that classified the singlets and doublets identified by each method in the PBMCs. c  The proportion of droplets classified as singlets and doublets by each method in the fibroblasts. d The number of other methods that classified the singlets and doublets identified by each method in the fibroblasts. e - f The performance of each method when the majority classification of each droplet is considered the correct annotation in the PBMCs ( e ) and fibroblasts ( f ). g - h  The number of droplets classified as singlets (box plots) and doublets (bar plots) by all methods in the PBMC ( g ) and fibroblast ( h ) pools. i - j  The number of donors that were not identified by each method in each pool for PBMCs ( i ) and fibroblasts ( j ). PBMC: peripheral blood mononuclear cell. MCC: Matthew’s correlationcoefficient

The number of unique molecular identifiers (UMIs) and genes decreased in droplets that were classified as singlets by a larger number of methods while the mitochondrial percentage increased in both PBMCs and fibroblasts (Additional file 2 : Fig S2).

We next interrogated the performance of each method using the Matthew’s correlation coefficient (MCC) to calculate the consistency between Demuxify and true droplet classification. We identified consistent trends in the MCC scores for each method between the PBMCs (Fig. 2 e) and fibroblasts (Fig. 2 f). These data indicate that the methods behave similarly, relative to one another, for heterogeneous and homogeneous datasets.

Next, we sought to identify the droplets concordantly classified by all demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods in the PBMC and fibroblast datasets. On average, 732 singlets were identified for each individual by all the methods in the PBMC dataset. Likewise, 494 droplets were identified as singlets for each individual by all the methods in the fibroblast pools. However, the concordance of doublets identified by all methods was very low for both datasets (Fig. 2 e–f). Notably, the consistency of classifying a droplet as a doublet by all methods was relatively low (Fig. 2 b,d,g, and h). This suggests that doublet identification is not consistent between all the methods. Therefore, further investigation is required to identify the reasons for these inconsistencies between methods. It also suggests that combining multiple methods for doublet classification may be necessary for more complete doublet removal. Further, some methods could not identify all the individuals in each pool (Fig. 2 i–j). The non-concordance between different methods demonstrates the need to effectively test each method on a dataset where the droplet types are known.

Computational resources vary for demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods

We recorded each method’s computational resources for the PBMC pools, with ~20,000 cells captured per pool (Additional file 1 : Table S1). Of the demultiplexing methods, ScSplit took the most time (multiple days) and required the most steps, but Demuxalot , Demuxlet , and Freemuxlet used the most memory. Solo took the longest time (median 13 h) and most memory to run for the doublet detecting methods but is the only method built to be run directly from the command line, making it easy to implement (Additional file 2 : Fig S3).

Generate pools with known singlets and doublets

However, there is no gold standard to identify which droplets are singlets or doublets. Therefore, in the second phase of our experimental design (Fig. 1 b), we used the PBMC droplets classified as singlets by all methods to generate new pools in silico. We chose to use the PBMC dataset since our first analyses indicated that method performance is similar for homogeneous (fibroblast) and heterogeneous (PBMC) cell types (Fig. 2 and Additional file 2 : Fig S1) and because we had many more individuals available to generate in silico pools from the PBMC dataset (Additional file 1 : Table S1).

We generated 70 pools—10 each of pools that included 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 individuals (Additional file 1 : Table S2). We assume a maximum 20% doublet rate as it is unlikely researchers would use a technology that has a higher doublet rate (Fig. 3 a).

In silico Pool Doublet Annotation and Method Performance. a  The percent of singlets and doublets in the in -silico pools - separated by the number of multiplexed individuals per pool. b  The percentage and number of doublets that are heterogenic (detectable by demultiplexing methods), heterotypic (detectable by doublet detecting methods), both (detectable by either method category) and neither (not detectable with current methods) for each multiplexed pool size. c  Percent of droplets that each of the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods classified correctly for singlets and doublet subtypes for different multiplexed pool sizes. d  Matthew’s Correlation Coefficient (MCC) for each of the methods for each of the multiplexed pool sizes. e  Balanced accuracy for each of the methods for each of the multiplexed pool sizes

We used azimuth to classify the PBMC cell types for each droplet used to generate the in silico pools [ 19 ] (Additional file 2 : Fig S4). As these pools have been generated in silico using empirical singlets that have been well annotated, we next identified the proportion of doublets in each pool that were heterogenic, heterotypic, both, and neither. This approach demonstrates that a significant percentage of doublets are only detectable by doublet detecting methods (homogenic and heterotypic) for pools with 16 or fewer donors multiplexed (Fig. 3 b).

While the total number of doublets that would be missed if only using demultiplexing methods appears small for fewer multiplexed individuals (Fig. 3 b), it is important to recognise that this is partly a function of the ~732 singlet cells per individual used to generate these pools. Hence, the in silico pools with fewer individuals also have fewer cells. Therefore, to obtain numbers of doublets that are directly comparable to one another, we calculated the number of each doublet type that would be expected to be captured with 20,000 cells when 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 individuals were multiplexed (Additional file 2 : Fig S5). These results demonstrate that many doublets would be falsely classified as singlets since they are homogenic when just using demultiplexing methods for a pool of 20,000 cells captured with a 16% doublet rate (Additional file 2 : Fig S5). However, as more individuals are multiplexed, the number of droplets that would not be detectable by demultiplexing methods (homogenic) decreases. This suggests that typical workflows that use only one demultiplexing method to remove doublets from pools that capture 20,000 droplets with 16 or fewer multiplexed individuals fail to adequately remove between 173 (16 multiplexed individuals) and 1,325 (2 multiplexed individuals) doublets that are homogenic and heterotypic which could be detected by doublet detecting methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S5). Therefore, a technique that uses both demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods in parallel will complement more complete doublet removal methods. Consequently, we next set out to identify the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods that perform the best on their own and in concert with other methods.

Doublet and singlet droplet classification effectiveness varies for demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods

Demultiplexing methods fail to classify homogenic doublets.

We next investigated the percentage of the droplets that were correctly classified by each demultiplexing and doublet detecting method. In addition to the seven demultiplexing methods, we also included Demuxalot with the additional steps to refine the genotypes that can then be used for demultiplexing— Demuxalot (refined). Demultiplexing methods correctly classify a large portion of the singlets and heterogenic doublets (Fig. 3 c). This pattern is highly consistent across different cell types, with the notable exceptions being decreased correct classifications for erythrocytes and platelets when greater than 16 individuals are multiplexed (Additional file 2 : Fig S6).

However, Demuxalot consistently demonstrates the highest correct heterogenic doublet classification. Further, the percentage of the heterogenic doublets classified correctly by Souporcell decreases when large numbers of donors are multiplexed. ScSplit is not as effective as the other demultiplexing methods at classifying heterogenic doublets, partly due to the unique doublet classification method, which assumes that the doublets will generate a single cluster separate from the donors (Table 1 ). Importantly, the demultiplexing methods identify almost none of the homogenic doublets for any multiplexed pool size—demonstrating the need to include doublet detecting methods to supplement the demultiplexing method doublet detection.

Doublet detecting method classification performances vary greatly

In addition to assessing each of the methods with default settings, we also evaluated ScDblFinder with ‘known doublets’ provided. This method can take already known doublets and use them when detecting doublets. For these cases, we used the droplets that were classified as doublets by all the demultiplexing methods as ‘known doublets’.

Most of the methods classified a similarly high percentage of singlets correctly, with the exceptions of DoubletDecon and DoubletFinder for all pool sizes (Fig. 3 c). However, unlike the demultiplexing methods, there are explicit cell-type-specific biases for many of the doublet detecting methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S7). These differences are most notable for cell types with fewer cells (i.e. ASDC and cDC2) and proliferating cells (i.e. CD4 Proliferating, CD8 Proliferating, and NK Proliferating). Further, all of the softwares demonstrate high correct percentages for some cell types including CD4 Naïve and CD8 Naïve (Additional file 2 : Fig S7).

As expected, all doublet detecting methods identified heterotypic doublets more effectively than homotypic doublets (Fig. 3 c). However, ScDblFinder and Scrublet classified the most doublets correctly across all doublet types for pools containing 16 individuals or fewer. Solo was more effective at identifying doublets than Scds for pools containing more than 16 individuals. It is also important to note that it was not feasible to run DoubletDecon for the largest pools containing 128 multiplexed individuals and an average of 115,802 droplets (range: 113,594–119,126 droplets). ScDblFinder performed similarly when executed with and without known doublets (Pearson correlation P = 2.5 × 10 -40 ). This suggests that providing known doublets to ScDblFinder does not offer an added benefit.

Performances vary between demultiplexing and doublet detecting method and across the number of multiplexed individuals

We assessed the overall performance of each method with two metrics: the balanced accuracy and the MCC. We chose to use balanced accuracy since, with unbalanced group sizes, it is a better measure of performance than accuracy itself. Further, the MCC has been demonstrated as a more reliable statistical measure of performance since it considers all possible categories—true singlets (true positives), false singlets (false positives), true doublets (true negatives), and false doublets (false negatives). Therefore, a high score on the MCC scale indicates high performance in each metric. However, we provide additional performance metrics for each method (Additional file 1 : Table S3). For demultiplexing methods, both the droplet type (singlet or doublet) and the individual assignment were required to be considered a ‘true singlet’. In contrast, only the droplet type (singlet or doublet) was needed for doublet detection methods.

The MCC and balanced accuracy metrics are similar (Spearman’s ⍴ = 0.87; P < 2.2 × 10 -308 ). Further, the performance of Souporcell decreases for pools with more than 32 individuals multiplexed for both metrics (Student’s t -test for MCC: P < 1.1 × 10 -9 and balanced accuracy: P < 8.1 × 10 -11 ). Scds , ScDblFinder , and Scrublet are among the top-performing doublet detecting methods Fig. 3 d–e).

Overall, between 0.4 and 78.8% of droplets were incorrectly classified by the demultiplexing or doublet detecting methods depending on the technique and the multiplexed pool size (Additional file 2 : Fig S8). Demuxalot (refined) and DoubletDetection demonstrated the lowest percentage of incorrect droplets with about 1% wrong in the smaller pools (two multiplexed individuals) and about 3% incorrect in pools with at least 16 multiplexed individuals. Since some transitional states and cell types are present in low percentages in total cell populations (i.e. ASDCs at 0.02%), incorrect classification of droplets could alter scientific interpretations of the data, and it is, therefore, ideal for decreasing the number of erroneous assignments as much as possible.

False singlets and doublets demonstrate different metrics than correctly classified droplets

We next asked whether specific cell metrics might contribute to false singlet and doublet classifications for different methods. Therefore, we compared the number of genes, number of UMIs, mitochondrial percentage and ribosomal percentage of the false singlets and doublets to equal numbers of correctly classified cells for each demultiplexing and doublet detecting method.

The number of UMIs (Additional file 2 : Fig S9 and Additional file 1 : Table S4) and genes (Additional file 2 : Fig S10 and Additional file 1 : Table S5) demonstrated very similar distributions for all comparisons and all methods (Spearman ⍴ = 0.99, P < 2.2 × 10 -308 ). The number of UMIs and genes were consistently higher in false singlets and lower in false doublets for most demultiplexing methods except some smaller pool sizes (Additional file 2 : Fig S9a and Additional file 2 : Fig S10a; Additional file 1 : Table S4 and Additional file 1 : Table S5). The number of UMIs and genes was consistently higher in droplets falsely classified as singlets by the doublet detecting methods than the correctly identified droplets (Additional file 2 : Fig S9b and Additional file 2 : Fig S10b; Additional file 1 : Table S4 and Additional file 1 : Table S5). However, there was less consistency in the number of UMIs and genes detected in false singlets than correctly classified droplets between the different doublet detecting methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S9b and Additional file 2 : Fig S10b; Additional file 1 : Table S4 and Additional file 1 : Table S5).

The ribosomal percentage of the droplets falsely classified as singlets or doublets is similar to the correctly classified droplets for most methods—although they are statistically different for larger pool sizes (Additional file 2 : Fig S11a and Additional file 1 : Table S6). However, the false doublets classified by some demultiplexing methods ( Demuxalot , Demuxalot (refined), Demuxlet , ScSplit , Souporcell , and Vireo ) demonstrated higher ribosomal percentages. Some doublet detecting methods ( ScDblFinder , ScDblFinder with known doublets and Solo) demonstrated higher ribosomal percentages for the false doublets while other demonstrated lower ribosomal percentages ( DoubletDecon , DoubletDetection , and DoubletFinder ; Additional file 2 : Fig S11b and Additional file 1 : Table S6).

Like the ribosomal percentage, the mitochondrial percentage in false singlets is also relatively similar to correctly classified droplets for both demultiplexing (Additional file 2 : Fig S12a and Additional file 1 : Table S7) and doublet detecting methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S12b). The mitochondrial percentage for false doublets is statistically lower than the correctly classified droplets for a few larger pools for Freemuxlet , ScSplit , and Souporcell . The doublet detecting method Solo also demonstrates a small but significant decrease in mitochondrial percentage in the false doublets compared to the correctly annotated droplets. However, other doublet detecting methods including DoubletFinder and the larger pools of most other methods demonstrated a significant increase in mitochondrial percent in the false doublets compared to the correctly annotated droplets (Additional file 2 : Fig S12b).

Overall, these results demonstrate a strong relationship between the number of genes and UMIs and limited influence of ribosomal or mitochondrial percentage in a droplet and false classification, suggesting that the number of genes and UMIs can significantly bias singlet and doublet classification by demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods.

Ambient RNA, number of reads per cell, and uneven pooling impact method performance

To further quantify the variables that impact the performance of each method, we simulated four conditions that could occur with single-cell RNA-seq experiments: (1) decreased number of reads (reduced 50%), (2) increased ambient RNA (10%, 20% and 50%), (3) increased mitochondrial RNA (5%, 10% and 25%) and 4) uneven donor pooling from single donor spiking (0.5 or 0.75 proportion of pool from one donor). We chose these scenarios because they are common technical effects that can occur.

We observed a consistent decrease in the demultiplexing method performance when the number of reads were decreased by 50% but the degree of the effect varied for each method and was larger in pools containing more multiplexed donors (Additional file 2 : Fig S13a and Additional file 1 : Table S8). Decreasing the number of reads did not have a detectable impact on the performance of the doublet detecting methods.

Simulating additional ambient RNA (10%, 20%, or 50%) decreased the performance of all the demultiplexing methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S13b and Additional file 1 : Table S9) but some were unimpacted in pools that had 16 or fewer individuals multiplexed ( Souporcell and Vireo ). The performance of some of the doublet detecting methods were impacted by the ambient RNA but the performance of most methods did not decrease. Scrublet and ScDblFinder were the doublet detecting methods most impacted by ambient RNA but only in pools with at least 32 multiplexed donors (Additional file 2 : Fig S13b and Additional file 1 : Table S9).

Increased mitochondrial percent did not impact the performance of demultiplexing or doublet detecting methods (Additional file 2 : Fig S13c and Additional file 1 : Table S10).

We also tested whether experimental designs that pooling uneven proportions of donors would alter performance. We tested scenarios where either half the pool was composed of a single donor (0.5 spiked donor proportion) or where three quarters of the pool was composed of a single donor. This experimental design significantly reduced the demultiplexing method performance (Additional file 2 : Fig S13d and Additional file 1 : Table S11) with the smallest influence on Freemuxlet . The performance of most of the doublet detecting methods were unimpacted except for DoubletDetection that demonstrated significant decreases in performance in pools where at least 16 donors were multiplexed. Intriguingly, the performance of Solo increased with the spiked donor pools when the pools consisted of 16 donors or less.

Our results demonstrate significant differences in overall performance between different demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods. We further noticed some differences in the use of the methods. Therefore, we have accumulated these results and each method’s unique characteristics and benefits in a heatmap for visual interpretation (Fig. 4 ).

Assessment of each of the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods. Assessments of a variety of metrics for each of the demultiplexing (top) and doublet detecting (bottom) methods

Framework for improving singlet classifications via method combinations

After identifying the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods that performed well individually, we next sought to test whether using intersectional combinations of multiple methods would enhance droplet classifications and provide a software platform— Demuxafy —capable of supporting the execution of these intersectional combinations.

We recognise that different experimental designs will be required for each project. As such, we considered this when testing combinations of methods. We considered multiple experiment designs and two different intersectional methods: (1) more than half had to classify a droplet as a singlet to be called a singlet and (2) at least half of the methods had to classify a droplet as a singlet to be called a singlet. Significantly, these two intersectional methods only differ when an even number of methods are being considered. For combinations that include demultiplexing methods, the individual called by the majority of the methods is the individual used for that droplet. When ties occur, the individual is considered ‘unassigned’.

Combining multiple doublet detecting methods improve doublet removal for non-multiplexed experimental designs

For the non-multiplexed experimental design, we considered all possible method combinations (Additional file 1 : Table S12). We identified important differences depending on the number of droplets captured and have provided recommendations accordingly. We identified that DoubletFinder , Scrublet , ScDblFinder and Scds is the ideal combination for balanced droplet calling when less than 2,000 droplets are captured. Scds and ScDblFinder or Scrublet , Scds and ScDblFinder is the best combination when 2,000–10,000 droplets are captured. Scds , Scrublet, ScDblFinder and DoubletDetection is the best combination when 10,000–20,000 droplets are captured and Scrublet , Scds , DoubletDetection and ScDblFinder . It is important to note that even a slight increase in the MCC significantly impacts the number of true singlets and true doublets classified with the degree of benefit highly dependent on the original method performance. The combined method increases the MCC compared to individual doublet detecting methods on average by 0.11 and up to 0.33—a significant improvement in the MCC ( t -test FDR < 0.05 for 95% of comparisons). For all combinations, the intersectional droplet method requires more than half of the methods to consider the droplet a singlet to classify it as a singlet (Fig. 5 ).

Recommended Method Combinations Dependent on Experimental Design. Method combinations are provided for different experimental designs, including those that are not multiplexed (left) and multiplexed (right), including experiments that have reference SNP genotypes available vs those that do not and finally, multiplexed experiments with different numbers of individuals multiplexed. The each bar represents either a single method (shown with the coloured icon above the bar) or a combination of methods (shown with the addition of the methods and an arrow indicating the bar). The proportion of true singlets, true doublets, false singlets and false doublets for each method or combination of methods is shown with the filled barplot and the MCC is shown with the black points overlaid on the barplot. MCC: Matthew’s Correlation Coefficient

Demuxafy performs better than Chord

Chord is an ensemble machine learning doublet detecting method that uses Scds and DoubletFinder to identify doublets. We compared Demuxafy using Scds and DoubletFinder to Chord and identified that Demuxafy outperformed Chord in pools that contained at least eight donors and was equivalent in pools that contained less than eight donors (Additional file 2 : Fig S14). This is because Chord classifies more droplets as false singlets and false doublets than Demuxafy . In addition, Chord failed to complete for two of the pools that contained 128 multiplexed donors.

Combining multiple demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods improve doublet removal for multiplexed experimental designs

For experiments where 16 or fewer individuals are multiplexed with reference SNP genotypes available, we considered all possible combinations between the demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods except ScDblFinder with known doublets due to its highly similar performance to ScDblFinder (Fig 3 ; Additional file 1 : Table S13). The best combinations are DoubletFinder , Scds , ScDblFinder , Vireo and Demuxalot (refined) (<~5 donors) and Scrublet , ScDblFinder , DoubletDetection , Dropulation and Demuxalot (refined) (Fig. 5 ). These intersectional methods increase the MCC compared to the individual methods ( t -test FDR < 0.05), generally resulting in increased true singlets and doublets compared to the individual methods. The improvement in MCC depends on every single method’s performance but, on average, increases by 0.22 and up to 0.71. For experiments where the reference SNP genotypes are unknown, the individuals multiplexed in the pool with 16 or fewer individuals multiplexed, DoubletFinder , ScDblFinder, Souporcell and Vireo (<~5 donors) and Scds , ScDblFinder , DoubletDetection , Souporcell and Vireo are the ideal methods (Fig. 5 ). These intersectional methods again significantly increase the MCC up to 0.87 compared to any of the individual techniques that could be used for this experimental design ( t -test FDR < 0.05 for 94.2% of comparisons). In both cases, singlets should only be called if more than half of the methods in the combination classify the droplet as a singlet.

Combining multiple demultiplexing methods improves doublet removal for large multiplexed experimental designs

For experiments that multiplex more than 16 individuals, we considered the combinations between all demultiplexing methods (Additional file 1 : Table S14) since only a small proportion of the doublets would be undetectable by demultiplexing methods (droplets that are homogenic; Fig 3 b). To balance doublet removal and maintain true singlets, we recommend the combination of Demuxalot (refined) and Dropulation . These method combinations significantly increase the MCC by, on average, 0.09 compared to all the individual methods ( t -test FDR < 0.05). This substantially increases true singlets and true doublets relative to the individual methods. If reference SNP genotypes are not available for the individuals multiplexed in the pools, Vireo performs the best (≥ 16 multiplexed individuals; Fig. 5 ). This is the only scenario in which executing a single method is advantageous to a combination of methods. This is likely due to the fact that most of the methods perform poorly for larger pool sizes (Fig. 3 c).

These results collectively demonstrate that, regardless of the experimental design, demultiplexing and doublet detecting approaches that intersect multiple methods significantly enhance droplet classification. This is consistent across different pool sizes and will improve singlet annotation.

Demuxafy improves doublet removal and improves usability

To make our intersectional approaches accessible to other researchers, we have developed Demuxafy ( https://demultiplexing-doublet-detecting-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html ) - an easy-to-use software platform powered by Singularity. This platform provides the requirements and instructions to execute each demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods. In addition, Demuxafy provides wrapper scripts that simplify method execution and effectively summarise results. We also offer tools that help estimate expected numbers of doublets and provide method combination recommendations based on scRNA-seq pool characteristics. Demuxafy also combines the results from multiple different methods, provides classification combination summaries, and provides final integrated combination classifications based on the intersectional techniques selected by the user. The significant advantages of Demuxafy include a centralised location to execute each of these methods, simplified ways to combine methods with an intersectional approach, and summary tables and figures that enable practical interpretation of multiplexed datasets (Fig. 1 a).

Demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods have made large-scale scRNA-seq experiments achievable. However, many demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods have been developed in the recent past, and it is unclear how their performances compare. Further, the demultiplexing techniques best detect heterogenic doublets while doublet detecting methods identify heterotypic doublets. Therefore, we hypothesised that demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods would be complementary and be more effective at removing doublets than demultiplexing methods alone.

Indeed, we demonstrated the benefit of utilising a combination of demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods. The optimal intersectional combination of methods depends on the experimental design and capture characteristics. Our results suggest super loaded captures—where a high percentage of doublets is expected—will benefit from multiplexing. Further, when many donors are multiplexed (>16), doublet detecting is not required as there are few doublets that are homogenic and heterotypic.

We have provided different method combination recommendations based on the experimental design. This decision is highly dependent on the research question.

Conclusions

Overall, our results provide researchers with important demultiplexing and doublet detecting performance assessments and combinatorial recommendations. Our software platform, Demuxafy ( https://demultiplexing-doublet-detecting-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html ), provides a simple implementation of our methods in any research lab around the world, providing cleaner scRNA-seq datasets and enhancing interpretation of results.

PBMC scRNA-seq data

Blood samples were collected and processed as described previously [ 17 ]. Briefly, mononuclear cells were isolated from whole blood samples and stored in liquid nitrogen until thawed for scRNA-seq capture. Equal numbers of cells from 12 to 16 samples were multiplexed per pool and single-cell suspensions were super loaded on a Chromium Single Cell Chip A (10x Genomics) to capture 20,000 droplets per pool. Single-cell libraries were processed per manufacturer instructions and the 10× Genomics Cell Ranger Single Cell Software Suite (v 2.2.0) was used to process the data and map it to GRCh38. Cellbender v0.1.0 was used to identify empty droplets. Almost all droplets reported by Cell Ranger were identified to contain cells by Cellbender (mean: 99.97%). The quality control metrics of each pool are demonstrated in Additional file 2 : Fig S15.

PBMC DNA SNP genotyping

SNP genotype data were prepared as described previously [ 17 ]. Briefly, DNA was extracted from blood with the QIAamp Blood Mini kit and genotyped on the Illumina Infinium Global Screening Array. SNP genotypes were processed with Plink and GCTA before imputing on the Michigan Imputation Server using Eagle v2.3 for phasing and Minimac3 for imputation based on the Haplotype Reference Consortium panel (HRCr1.1). SNP genotypes were then lifted to hg38 and filtered for > 1% minor allele frequency (MAF) and an R 2 > 0.3.

Fibroblast scRNA-seq data

The fibroblast scRNA-seq data has been described previously [ 18 ]. Briefly, human skin punch biopsies from donors over the age of 18 were cultured in DMEM high glucose supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), L-glutamine, 100 U/mL penicillin and 100 μg/mL (Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA).

For scRNA-seq, viable cells were flow sorted and single cell suspensions were loaded onto a 10× Genomics Single Cell 3’ Chip and were processed per 10× instructions and the Cell Ranger Single Cell Software Suite from 10× Genomics was used to process the sequencing data into transcript count tables as previously described [ 18 ]. Cellbender v0.1.0 was used to identify empty droplets. Almost all droplets reported by Cell Ranger were identified to contain cells by Cellbender (mean: 99.65%). The quality control metrics of each pool are demonstrated in Additional file 2 : Fig S16.

Fibroblast DNA SNP genotyping

The DNA SNP genotyping for fibroblast samples has been described previously [ 18 ]. Briefly, DNA from each donor was genotyped on an Infinium HumanCore-24 v1.1 BeadChip (Illumina). GenomeStudioTM V2.0 (Illumina), Plink and GenomeStudio were used to process the SNP genotypes. Eagle V2.3.5 was used to phase the SNPs and it was imputed with the Michigan Imputation server using minimac3 and the 1000 genome phase 3 reference panel as described previously [ 18 ].

Demultiplexing methods

All the demultiplexing methods were built and run from a singularity image.

Demuxalot [ 6 ] is a genotype reference-based single cell demultiplexing method. Demualot v0.2.0 was used in python v3.8.5 to annotate droplets. The likelihoods, posterior probabilities and most likely donor for each droplet were estimated using the Demuxalot Demultiplexer.predict_posteriors function. We also used Demuxalot Demultiplexer.learn_genotypes function to refine the genotypes before estimating the likelihoods, posterior probabilities and likely donor of each droplet with the refined genotypes as well.

The Popscle v0.1-beta suite [ 16 ] for population genomics in single cell data was used for Demuxlet and Freemuxlet demultiplexing methods. The popscle dsc-pileup function was used to create a pileup of variant calls at known genomic locations from aligned sequence reads in each droplet with default arguments.

Demuxlet [ 3 ] is a SNP genotype reference-based single cell demultiplexing method. Demuxlet was run with a genotype error coefficient of 1 and genotype error offset rate of 0.05 and the other default parameters using the popscle demuxlet command from Popscle (v0.1-beta).

Freemuxlet [ 16 ] is a SNP genotype reference-free single cell demultiplexing method. Freemuxlet was run with default parameters including the number of samples included in the pool using the popscle freemuxlet command from Popscle (v0.1-beta).

Dropulation

Dropulation [ 5 ] is a SNP genotype reference-based single cell demultiplexing method that is part of the Drop-seq software. Dropulation from Drop-seq v2.5.1 was implemented for this manuscript. In addition, the method for calling singlets and doublets was provided by the Dropulation developer and implemented in a custom R script available on Github and Zenodo (see “Availability of data and materials”).

ScSplit v1.0.7 [ 7 ] was downloaded from the ScSplit github and the recommended steps for data filtering quality control prior to running ScSplit were followed. Briefly, reads that had read quality lower than 10, were unmapped, were secondary alignments, did not pass filters, were optical PCR duplicates or were duplicate reads were removed. The resulting bam file was then sorted and indexed followed by freebayes to identify single nucleotide variants (SNVs) in the dataset. The resulting SNVs were filtered for quality scores greater than 30 and for variants present in the reference SNP genotype vcf. The resulting filtered bam and vcf files were used as input for the s cSplit count command with default settings to count the number of reference and alternative alleles in each droplet. Next the allele matrices were used to demultiplex the pool and assign cells to different clusters using the scSplit run command including the number of individuals ( -n ) option and all other options set to default. Finally, the individual genotypes were predicted for each cluster using the scSplit genotype command with default parameters.

Souporcell [ 4 ] is a SNP genotype reference-free single cell demultiplexing method. The Souporcell v1.0 singularity image was downloaded via instructions from the gihtub page. The Souporcell pipeline was run using the souporcell_pipeline.py script with default options and the option to include known variant locations ( --common_variants ).

Vireo [ 2 ] is a single cell demultiplexing method that can be used with reference SNP genotypes or without them. For this assessment, Vireo was used with reference SNP genotypes. Per Vireo recommendations, we used model 1 of the cellSNP [ 20 ] version 0.3.2 to make a pileup of SNPs for each droplet with the recommended options using the genotyped reference genotype file as the list of common known SNP and filtered with SNP locations that were covered by at least 20 UMIs and had at least 10% minor allele frequency across all droplets. Vireo version 0.4.2 was then used to demultiplex using reference SNP genotypes and indicating the number of individuals in the pools.

Doublet detecting methods

All doublet detecting methods were built and run from a singularity image.

DoubletDecon

DoubletDecon [ 9 ] is a transcription-based deconvolution method for identifying doublets. DoubletDecon version 1.1.6 analysis was run in R version 3.6.3. SCTransform [ 21 ] from Seurat [ 22 ] version 3.2.2 was used to preprocess the scRNA-seq data and then the Improved_Seurat_Pre_Process function was used to process the SCTransformed scRNA-seq data. Clusters were identified using Seurat function FindClusters with resolution 0.2 and 30 principal components (PCs). Then the Main_Doublet_Decon function was used to deconvolute doublets from singlets for six different rhops—0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1. We used a range of rhop values since the doublet annotation by DoubletDecon is dependent on the rhop parameter which is selected by the user. The rhop that resulted in the closest number of doublets to the expected number of doublets was selected on a per-pool basis and used for all subsequent analysis. Expected number of doublets were estimated with the following equation:

where N is the number of droplets captured and D is the number of expected doublets.

DoubletDetection

DoubletDetection [ 14 ] is a transcription-based method for identifying doublets. DoubletDetection version 2.5.2 analysis was run in python version 3.6.8. Droplets without any UMIs were removed before analysis with DoubletDetection . Then the doubletdetection.BoostClassifier function was run with 50 iterations with use_phenograph set to False and standard_scaling set to True. The predicted number of doublets per iteration was visualised across all iterations and any pool that did not converge after 50 iterations, it was run again with increasing numbers of iterations until they reached convergence.

DoubletFinder

DoubletFinder [ 10 ] is a transcription-based doublet detecting method. DoubletFinder version 2.0.3 was implemented in R version 3.6.3. First, droplets that were more than 3 median absolute deviations (mad) away from the median for mitochondrial per cent, ribosomal per cent, number of UMIs or number of genes were removed per developer recommendations. Then the data was normalised with SCTransform followed by cluster identification using FindClusters with resolution 0.3 and 30 principal components (PCs). Then, pKs were selected by the pK that resulted in the largest BC MVN as recommended by DoubletFinder. The pK vs BC MVN relationship was visually inspected for each pool to ensure an effective BC MVN was selected for each pool. Finally, the homotypic doublet proportions were calculated and the number of expected doublets with the highest doublet proportion were classified as doublets per the following equation:

ScDblFinder

ScDblFinder [ 11 ] is a transcription-based method for detecting doublets from scRNA-seq data. ScDblFinder 1.3.25 was implemented in R version 4.0.3. ScDblFinder was implemented with two sets of options. The first included implementation with the expected doublet rate as calculated by:

where N is the number of droplets captured and R is the expected doublet rate. The second condition included the same expected number of doublets and included the doublets that had already been identified by all the demultiplexing methods.

Scds [ 12 ] is a transcription-based doublet detecting method. Scds version 1.1.2 analysis was completed in R version 3.6.3. Scds was implemented with the cxds function and bcds functions with default options followed by the cxds_bcds_hybrid with estNdbl set to TRUE so that doublets will be estimated based on the values from the cxds and bcds functions.

Scrublet [ 13 ] is a transcription-based doublet detecting method for single-cell RNA-seq data. Scrublet was implemented in python version 3.6.3. Scrublet was implemented per developer recommendations with at least 3 counts per droplet, 3 cells expressing a given gene, 30 PCs and a doublet rate based on the following equation:

where N is the number of droplets captured and R is the expected doublet rate. Four different minimum number of variable gene percentiles: 80, 85, 90 and 95. Then, the best variable gene percentile was selected based on the distribution of the simulated doublet scores and the location of the doublet threshold selection. In the case that the selected threshold does not fall between a bimodal distribution, those pools were run again with a manual threshold set.

Solo [ 15 ] is a transcription-based method for detecting doublets in scRNA-seq data. Solo was implemented with default parameters and an expected number of doublets based on the following equation:

where N is the number of droplets captured and D is the number of expected doublets. Solo was additionally implemented in a second run for each pool with the doublets that were identified by all the demultiplexing methods as known doublets to initialize the model.

In silico pool generation

Cells that were identified as singlets by all methods were used to simulate pools. Ten pools containing 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 individuals were simulated assuming a maximum 20% doublet rate as it is unlikely researchers would use a technology that has a higher doublet rate. The donors for each simulated pool were randomly selected using a custom R script which is available on Github and Zenodo (see ‘Availability of data and materials’). A separate bam for the cell barcodes for each donor was generated using the filterbarcodes function from the sinto package (v0.8.4). Then, the GenerateSyntheticDoublets function provided by the Drop-seq [ 5 ] package was used to simulate new pools containing droplets with known singlets and doublets.

Twenty-one total pools—three pools from each of the different simulated pool sizes (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 individuals) —were used to simulate different experimental scenarios that may be more challenging for demultiplexing and doublet detecting methods. These include simulating higher ambient RNA, higher mitochondrial percent, decreased read coverage and imbalanced donor proportions as described subsequently.

High ambient RNA simulations

Ambient RNA was simulated by changing the barcodes and UMIs on a random selection of reads for 10, 20 or 50% of the total UMIs. This was executed with a custom R script that is available in Github and Zenodo (see ‘Availability of data and materials’).

High mitochondrial percent simulations

High mitochondrial percent simulations were produced by replacing reads in 5, 10 or 25% of the randomly selected cells with mitochondrial reads. The number of reads to replace was derived from a normal distribution with an average of 30 and a standard deviation of 3. This was executed with a custom R script available in Github and Zenodo (see ‘Availability of data and materials’).

Imbalanced donor simulations

We simulated pools that contained uneven proportions of the donors in the pools to identify if some methods are better at demultiplexing pools containing uneven proportions of each donor in the pool. We simulated pools where 50, 75 or 95% of the pool contained cells from a single donor and the remainder of the pool was even proportions of the remaining donors in the pool. This was executed with a custom R script available in Github and Zenodo (see ‘Availability of data and materials’).

Decrease read coverage simulations

Decreased read coverage of pools was simulated by down-sampling the reads by two-thirds of the original coverage.

Classification annotation

Demultiplexing methods classifications were considered correct if the droplet annotation (singlet or doublet) and the individual annotation was correct. If the droplet type was correct but the individual annotation was incorrect (i.e. classified as a singlet but annotated as the wrong individual), then the droplet was incorrectly classified.

Doublet detecting methods were considered to have correct classifications if the droplet annotation matched the known droplet type.

All downstream analyses were completed in R version 4.0.2.

Availability of data and materials

All data used in this manuscript is publicly available. The PBMC data is available on GEO (Accession: GSE196830) [ 23 ] as originally described in [ 17 ]. The fibroblast data is available on ArrayExpress (Accession Number: E-MTAB-10060) [ 24 ] and as originally described in [ 18 ]. The code used for the analyses in this manuscript are provided on Github ( https://github.com/powellgenomicslab/Demuxafy_manuscript/tree/v4 ) and Zenodo ( https://zenodo.org/records/10813452 ) under an MIT Open Source License [ 25 , 26 ]. Demuxafy is provided as a package with source code available on Github ( https://github.com/drneavin/Demultiplexing_Doublet_Detecting_Docs ) and instructions on ReadTheDocs ( https://demultiplexing-doublet-detecting-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ ) under an MIT Open Source License [ 27 ]. Demuxafy is also available on Zenodo with the link https://zenodo.org/records/10870989 [ 28 ].

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Wenjing She was the primary editor of this article and managed its editorial process and peer review in collaboration with the rest of the editorial team.

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This work was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator grant (1175781), and funding from the Goodridge foundation. J.E.P is also supported by a fellowship from the Fok Foundation.

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Drew Neavin, Anne Senabouth, Himanshi Arora & Joseph E. Powell

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Himanshi Arora

Wellcome Sanger Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK

Jimmy Tsz Hang Lee

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DRN and JEP conceived the project idea and study design. JTHL, AR, LF, SP, CJY, DJM, MM and MH provided feedback on experimental design. DRN carried out analyses with support on coding from AS. JTHL and AR tested Demuxafy and provided feedback. DRN and JEP wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed and provided feedback on the manuscript.

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Briefly, all work was approved by the Royal Hobart Hospital, the Hobart Eye Surgeons Clinic, Human Research Ethics Committees of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital (11/1031), University of Melbourne (1545394) and University of Tasmania (H0014124) in accordance with the requirements of the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) and conformed with the Declaration of Helsinki [ 29 ].

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C.J.Y. is founder for and holds equity in DropPrint Genomics (now ImmunAI) and Survey Genomics, a Scientific Advisory Board member for and holds equity in Related Sciences and ImmunAI, a consultant for and holds equity in Maze Therapeutics, and a consultant for TReX Bio, HiBio, ImYoo, and Santa Ana. Additionally, C.J.Y is also newly an Innovation Investigator for the Arc Institute. C.J.Y. has received research support from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Genentech, BioLegend, ScaleBio and Illumina.

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Neavin, D., Senabouth, A., Arora, H. et al. Demuxafy : improvement in droplet assignment by integrating multiple single-cell demultiplexing and doublet detection methods. Genome Biol 25 , 94 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-024-03224-8

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-024-03224-8

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