Night Experience – Sensory
Concepts:
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Eyes have rod cells that allow animals and people to see at night.
When eyesight is compromised, other senses have heightened awareness.
The nighttime can be mysterious, but it can also be fascinating if presented properly.
Objectives:
 The students will be encour-
aged to use all of their senses
fully. Since our eyesight is rendered less effective, the other
senses almost naturally attempt to compensate for this
loss.
 The students will experience
the natural world at night.
 The students will be in the outdoors at night.
Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Activities in Lesson:::
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Equipment:
 Various materials that smell
 Flashlight for emergency use
 2 film canisters with rattling
object inside
 2 blindfolds
 Other film canisters with a
variety of objects inside to
produce sounds
 Colored sheets of paper
Note to Teacher:
Leading a night experience can
be a magical and exhilarating
activity during an environmental
education program. The world
after dark has always been a
mysterious and uncomfortable
place for most people.
Vocabulary
Setting the Mood (10 min)
Candle Trick (10 min)
Rods & Cones (10 min)
Color Cards (10 min)
Sound Inventory (15 min)
Feely Bag (10 min)
Smell Inventory ( 10 min)
Moon Rocks ( 10 min)
Solo Walk/ Sit (15 min)
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Adaptation- an alteration or adjustment in structure or habits,
often hereditary, by which a
species or individual improves
its condition in relationship to its
environment.
Cone- one of the photoreceptors in the retina of the eye that
is responsible for daylight and
color vision. These photoreceptors are most densely concentrated in the fovea centralis,
creating the area of greatest
visual acuity.
Crepuscular- becoming active
at twilight or before sunrise, as
do bats and certain insects and
birds.
Diurnal- occurring or active during the daytime rather than at
night.
Echolocation- a sensory system
in certain animals, such as bats
and dolphins, in which usually
high-pitched sounds are emitted and their echoes interpreted
to determine the direction and
distance of objects.
Nocturnal- animals that are
most active at night.
Predator- an organism that lives
by preying on other organisms.
Prey– an animal hunted or
caught for food; quarry.
Rod– any of various rodshaped cells in the retina that
respond to dim light.
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Sensory Night Experience
Setting the Mood (10 min)
1. Creating the atmosphere for any night experience is perhaps the most important element of
this activity. Find an area near your dismissal
point to have a brief discussion with your trail
group. Some things to consider when setting
the mood for the night experience are:
 No flashlights allowed. Using a flashlight
prevents a student from using his/her eyesight effectively. Bright lights will ruin any
night vision they have developed. Tell students to shield out overhead sidewalk lights
as they would shield the sun on a bright
day. The only person with a flashlight
should be the group leader for use in case
of emergencies.
 Talk in a quiet voice. If your voice is low,
this will help the students quiet down.
 Do not leave until the group is in a proper
mood. If the group is talkative and rowdy,
the hike will be ineffective.
 Deal with student fears before leaving. Ask
the students if there is anything of which to
be afraid. They will see that they are not the
only ones in the group who may have a fear
of being outside at night with no flashlight.
Many of these fears can be calmed through
discussion (i.e. snakes usually do not come
out at night). Animals are just as afraid of
you as you are of them. Ask them questions like, “Are you excited about going outdoors in the dark? What kinds of things do
you expect to see? How well are your eyes
going to work in the dark? How long will it
take you to get used to the dark? What other senses can we use to increase our
awareness?”
 Ask the students how they think the night
experience can be done safely. Being quiet
allows the group leader to hear if anything
happens (someone tripping or the group
leader being asked to slow down).
 Staying together as a group is also
important.
2. As you leave your dismissal point and head
out on your hike, remember to move slowly,
night vision takes some time to reach its maximum point. Go for a short distance, far enough
to be removed from any lights, and stop and do
an activity to let their eyes adjust. An activity
that focuses on how their eyes work at night is
usually effective.
Candle trick (10
minutes)
Materials: candle, matches or lighter.
1. This should be done after the students have
had a chance for their eyes to adjust, even if
just a little bit. Ask the students to close one
eye and cover it with their hand, leaving their
other eye open.
2. Tell them you are going to light a candle and
that once it is lit, they should stare at the light
with their open eye. They should keep staring
until you tell them otherwise. Once everyone is
situated, tell the group a story. You can find
stories in the book Keepers of the Night or you
can make one up. It works well for the instructor to have the story memorized so they can
keep their eye focused on the light.
3. Once the story is completed, tell the students
that you are going to count to three and blow
out the candle. When you blow out the candle
they need to switch the eye out of which they
are looking. Once they switch, have them
switch again and then eventually look out of
both eyes.
4. If everything works correctly, and it usually
does, the students should have one pupil that is
dilated and one pupil that is constricted. Their
dilated pupil is the one that was closed and covered and their constricted pupil is the one that
was looking at the candle. You can continue
with a discussion about how their eyes work
and what is happening when they stare at the
candle. Most students will be able to figure out
what happened but you may need to add more
details.
Rods and Cones (10min)
1. Ask the students to choose partners and
stand facing their partner. Next ask the students
to pick a place on their partners face at which to
stare. It is important to stay still and
concentrate. There will be some initial giggling
but the kids will settle into the activity. After
about a minute, if no one has said anything, ask
the students what is happening to their
partner’s face. Answers vary from, “he
morphed!” to, “she turned into a wolf,” to other
strange night sightings. Explain to the students
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Sensory Night Experience
that the eye is made up of two major cells: rods
and cones. The cones are concentrated in the
center of the eye and the rods are concentrated
in the peripheral vision. Cones allow the eye to
distinguish color while rods distinguish shapes
in black and white. Because the rods are
mainly in the periphery, the eye becomes
quickly tired at night when you stare straight
ahead at one thing. How does this effect night
hikes? If the students stare at the trail by their
feet the whole hike they will lose their night
vision or begin to see images. Tell the students
to keep moving their eyes around as they hike
to avoid this problem.
Color Cards (10 min)
Materials: colored sheets of paper.
Arrange the group in a circle and show them a
color card, can be sheets of colored paper, etc.
After everyone has seen the card ask them to
guess its color. Try a few different colors.
Discuss rods and cones and why it is difficult to
see colors at night. Have the students take a
sheet of paper with them, when they get back to
a light have them look to see if it was the color
they thought it was in the dark.
Sound Inventory (15 min)
Materials: canisters filled with objects to make
different sounds.
1. There are several different ways you can do
a sound inventory. As the trail group is walking,
you can ask them to cup their hands, place
them behind their ears, and continue walking.
Space them out about five feet form each other
so they can pick up noises other than one another.
2. You can also have the group come to a stop
and ask them to stand silently for one or two
minutes. In that time ask them to count how
many different noises they hear. It may be beneficial to spread your group out in the area
where you have stopped. You may have them
count natural sounds on one hand and human
sounds on the other.
3. Ask the students how good they think their
hearing is. According to how many students
are in your group, have that many film canisters
filled with objects that make different sounds.
Each canister should have a matching film can-
ister with the same sound. Pass the
canisters around randomly and then have each
student shake their canister and try to find their
match by going around to people and listening
for their sound. Have the students discuss if
they found their match, if it was difficult or easy
for them and why.
4. There are many other ways this can be accomplished, but bring the students back together to discuss what they heard. Ask the group
whether they can hear better during the day or
night (there is not as much happening at night
so sounds are clearer and seem to travel further). What were the closest sounds? The furthest? Strangest? Rather than naming what
made the sounds, have the students try to describe the sounds by substituting words that
have similar sounds. Example: “vroom” for the
car, “whirr” for the wind. Ask if one object can
have more than one sound.
Feely Bag (10 min)
Materials: bag full of objects to touch.
1. Have the group sit in a circle. From your
feely bag pass an object around the circle. Ask
each person to touch it. Tell them not to guess
out loud what the object is. After everyone
feels the object, discuss what the object felt like
and try to identify it. Pass around a few more
objects. Some suggestions for feely bag items
include: pinecones, fungus, rock, feather, piece
of bark, corncob, snakeskin, etc.
2. Another version of this activity is having the
instructor choose an unusual feeling object.
(decaying log or twig with moss covering it
would be good). Have each person touch the
item and think of as many adjectives as
possible to describe how the object feels. Have
each person share an adjective with the group.
(Everyone uses a new word- no repeats).
**Note: this activity is most affective when the group
is settled.**
Smell inventory (10 min)
Materials: several containers with different
smells.
1. Talk to the students about how normally we
depend upon our eyesight more than any other
sense, and now we are going to focus on the
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Sensory Night Experience
sense of smell, without being able to see what
we smell.
2. Have a number of items that have distinct
smells with you and explain that you are going
to pass them around for each person to smell.
You can either let the students smell them or
you can go through them one at a time, allowing each person the time to decide what the
item is, then take a survey at the end. Try
some items like a clod of grass and dirt, a stick
of sassafras, some spicebush, or any other item
with a distinct smell.
choose. Next, send the
students one by one down the
trail at 45 second to 1-minute intervals.
3. For a sit, choose an area with enough space
to spread out. Explain to the students that they
will be spread out over a given area but that
you will be visible to all of them even if they
cannot see each other. Ask them to try and use
their senses to find three things they had not
noticed before while they were hiking. Instruct
them to remain quiet and still until you come to
collect them from their spots.
3. After you have gone through the smells, discuss some of the following. How easy was it to
distinguish what each smell was? Which smells
were easier to identify? What were some of the
characteristics of the items that were easier to
smell?
Moon Rocks (10 min)
Materials: Wint-O-Green Life Savers.
1. Find a place to sit down with your group to
tell them a story. This is your chance to create
any type of story you want, avoid anything that
may scare your participants.
2. Manage to fit into your story something about
magic moon rocks, the wint-o-green lifesavers,
and that you have some to share with your
group. Pass out the moon rocks and when the
students begin to crunch the rocks have them
watch for the sparks!
*Please see why this works in the background
information.
Solo Walks/Sits (15 min)
1. Explain to the students that they will now
have an opportunity to truly experience the
night. These activities require a complete
immersion into the night and should only be
done when the group is ready. The purpose is
to allow the students to experience how
peaceful the nighttime can be.
2. For a walk, choose an area with even terrain.
Ask a chaperone to stand about 20 yards down
the trail. This person should be out of sight.
Explain that the students will walk down the trail
to the adult who is waiting for them one at a
time. The walk should be done in silence and
the students may close their eyes if they
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Background
Evaluation:
√ Students have demonstrated that they can
Notes:
use their other senses in the dark.
√ Students experience the natural world at
night.
√ Students were able to participate.
√ Students can list ways their senses can be
enhanced at night.
Keep in Mind:
No matter who your group members are, it is
imperative that you take the time to address
any fears that your participants have. Some
ground rules should be established before going anywhere. You may consider including
rules like no trying to scare anyone (whether by
funny noises, touching them, jumping out in
front of them, etc), move slowly, or warn others
of obstacles in the path.
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Background
Night Vision
As night sets in, the eyes gradually adjust to
decreasing light. Since the rod cells of the
eye’s light-catching retina are sensitive to even
dim light, the eyes of many nocturnal animals
are packed with rod cells. Most animals, therefore, can see well enough at night to find and
catch food, flee from predators and navigate
around objects. Few wild animals go bump in
the night.
Many nocturnal animals, however, have only a
few color-sensing cone cells because there is
usually not enough light present for color to be
detected at night. As a result, and because
their cone cells are insensitive to the long wavelengths of red, few animals can see a red light,
which affects cone cells but not rod cells. This
is why it is a great idea to carry a flashlight covered with red acetate or cellophane. This will
allow you to shine a red light on a nocturnal animal for your group to see. The animal will not
get scared and run away from the light because
it cannot see it. They cannot detect the red end
of the spectrum the way humans can.
It sometimes appears that the eyes of certain
animals glow in the dark when we shine a light
into them. Animals' eyes do not really glow.
What you are seeing is referred to as eyeshine.
It is caused when the light is reflected. These
animals have a reflective layer of tissue called
the tapetum at the back of the eye, behind the
light-sensitive cells of the retina, which sends
light back over these cells to increase the eye’s
efficiency in low light levels. Extreme light from
a bright source that animals can detect, such as
a flashlight or the headlights of a car, reflect out
of the cornea and the animal’s eyes seem to
glow. Humans exhibit eyeshine to a certain degree, and it sometimes shows up as red eye in
photographs taken using a flash.
fore many animals will head
out of the forest into open areas at night to find food.
Wint-O-Green Lifesavers
In short, the sparking caused by Wint-O-Green
Lifesavers is an example of triboluminescence.
If you have a physics background, you are set.
If you are like most of us, this needs a bit of explanation.
Triboluminescence is light that is emitted by the
friction between two materials, in this case, sugar crystals. That is easy enough to understand
in a very broad sense but why is light emitted
with only these Lifesavers and not all candies?
Wintergreen flavoring is photoluminescent and
absorbs the light emitted by the friction of the
sugar and then re-emits it as a visible light,
bright enough for the human eye to catch. The
more wintergreen flavoring there is, the brighter
the light.
Sugar crystals are asymmetric and when they
are cracked they form either a pocket of positive or negative electrons. Once the pockets
get larger, they try to neutralize themselves and
electrons begin moving. When the negative
and positive electrons collide, there is lightning.
This lightning is not visible to the human eye,
that is where the wintergreen comes into play.
Wintergreen is a fluorescent material but it does
not glow unless light hits it at the right wavelength. The friction from the sugar crystals is
conveniently at the right wavelength.
At Bradford Woods we only use Lifesavers but
according to the article, pink Necco wafers work
too.
Sense of Smell
Many animals have moist noses and the moisture increases the intensity of a smell that
reaches the nose. Nocturnal animals tend to
have a keen sense of smell and the moister the
night air the further it aids them. Moist, cool air
gathers in valleys at night and many animals
will head down hills and mountains at night
where they can smell their prey more easily.
Smells are easier to detect in meadows, there-
Grade 3
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Standards
English/Language Arts
3.7.3 Answer questions completely and appropriately.
3.7.15 Follow three- and four-step oral directions.
Science
3.1.4 Discuss the results of investigations and consider the explanations of others.
3.1.5 Demonstrate the ability to work cooperatively
while respecting the ideas of others and communicating one’s own conclusions about findings.
3.3.1 Observe and describe the apparent motion of
the sun and moon over a time span of one
day.
3.3.2 Observe and describe that there are more
stars in the sky than anyone can easily count,
but they are not scattered evenly.
3.3.3 Observe and describe that the sun can be
seen only in the daytime.
Grade 4
English/Language Arts
4.7.1 Ask thoughtful questions and respond orally to
relevant questions with appropriate elaboration.
4.7.2 Summarize major ideas and supporting evidence presented in spoken presentations.
solids.
5.5.7 Explain that predictions
can be based on what is
known about the past, assuming that
conditions are similar.
5.4.5 Explain how changes in an organism’s habitat
are sometimes beneficial and sometimes
harmful.
Grade 6
English/Language Arts
6.7.3 Restate and carry out multiple-step oral instructions and directions.
Science
6.4.1 Explain that one of the most general distinctions among organisms is between green
plants, which use sunlight to make their own
food, and animals, which consume energy-rich
foods.
6.4.2 Give examples of organisms that cannot be
neatly classified as either plants or animals,
such as fungi and bacteria.
6.4.10 Describe how life on Earth depends on energy from the sun.
6.4.11 Describe that human beings have body
systems for obtaining and providing energy,
defense, reproduction, and the coordination of
body functions.
Science
4.3.1 Observe and report that the moon can be
seen sometimes at night and sometimes during the day.
4.3.8 Explain that the rotation of Earth on its axis
every 24 hours produces the night-and-day
cycle.
4.5.5 Explain how reasoning can be distorted by
strong feelings.
4.6.4 Observe and describe that some features of
things may stay the same even when other
features change.
Grade 5
English/Language Arts
5.7.1 Ask questions that seek information not already discussed.
5.7.3 Make inferences or draw conclusions based
on an oral report.
Science
5.2.8 Recognize when and describe that
comparisons might not be accurate because
some of the conditions are not kept the same.
5.4.4 Explain that in any particular environment,
some kinds of plants and animals survive well,
some do not survive as well, and some cannot
survive at all.
5.5.3 Classify objects in terms of simple figures and
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