The Five-Alive Club

A 3D tour of the five senses for children about five to eight. It follows a sparkle of light into the eye, a whipbird's call into the ear, a gum leaf's smell up the nose, a bite of apple onto the tongue and a soft touch at a fingertip, each sending a message to the brain. Free, with no ads and no sign-ups.

What your child will learn

• You have five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. Each one catches something from the world and sends a message along a nerve to your brain, and your brain makes sense of it.
• Some scientists say we have more than five. Proprioception tells you where your arms and legs are, even with your eyes shut; interoception tells you what's happening inside you, like feeling hungry or thirsty, or needing the toilet. The tour says so in one line, then sticks to the five best-known.
• Seeing. Light goes in through the clear cornea and the pupil, the black hole in the middle of the eye. The pupil gets smaller in bright light and bigger in the dark. The lens focuses the light onto the retina at the back, which has about 120 million rods and 7 million cones. The picture there is upside down, and the brain makes sense of it. The optic nerve carries the message to the back of the brain.
• Hearing. The outer ear funnels sound down the ear canal to the eardrum, which wobbles. Three tiny bones pass the wobble on (the stirrup is the smallest bone in the body) to the cochlea, a curly, shell-shaped tube full of liquid, where tiny hair cells ride the wave and send a message to the brain.
• Smelling. Tiny bits of smell float up to about 10 million smell sensors at the top of the nose. We can tell about 10,000 smells apart.
• Tasting. About 10,000 taste buds, in the bumps on the tongue, taste sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (savoury), all over the tongue. The nose helps: smell and taste together make flavour.
• Touching. Nerve endings in the skin feel soft and rough, warm and cool, and send a message to the brain.

How it works

Story. A possum (brushtail possums are out at night, so their senses are busy) tells it in nine short chapters. Each sense has its own ringed hero, and the camera follows it in: a sparkle of light from a waratah, the whipbird's call as a wave of sound, a puff of gum-leaf smell the koala brings, the apple the dugong remembers from the Munch-Crunch Club, and a tuft of the possum's own soft fur under a fingertip. At the nerve each one becomes the Zip-Zap Club's message, and the part of the brain that makes sense of it glows. Two close-ups turn the page into the eye (the lens, the upside-down picture, the rods and cones) and into the ear (the three tiny bones rocking, and the ripple round the cochlea). The echidna drops in from the Zip-Zap Club. Every word is spoken and shown.

Explore. Turn the child round, peek inside (the white of the eye goes see-through, and the inner ear lights up), or tap any part to hear what it does. Seven buttons: Look, Listen, Sniff, Taste and Touch each send that sense's hero in, and Light and Dark make the pupils small or wide. Follow a sense takes all five in turn, and What's this? shows the parts one at a time, including both close-ups.

Quiz. Six picture questions, read aloud, so it works before your child can read. A wrong answer greys out and they have another go; nothing is ever lost. Finishing brings a new animal for their My mob book, and a card of the words they now know.

The real words it teaches

The tour uses the real names for the parts, and says what each one means the first time. These are on the card at the end, and a tap on each says what it means. The cornea, iris and optic nerve, the hammer, anvil and stirrup, the smell sensors and the rods and cones are named in the story or Explore, but kept off the card.

• Senses: the five ways your body finds out about the world.
• Pupil: the black hole in the middle of your eye, where light goes in.
• Lens: the clear part inside your eye that focuses the light.
• Retina: the back of your eye, which turns light into messages.
• Eardrum: the thin skin in your ear that wobbles when sound hits it.
• Cochlea: the curly, shell-shaped part deep in your ear that hears the wobbles.
• Taste buds: the tiny tasters on your tongue.
• Nerve endings: the tiny feelers in your skin.

For grown-ups: the eye and the ear, in detail

The two close-ups (chapters 3 and 5) are drawn big and simple. What they show, cartoon but true:

1. The eye. Light passes the cornea, which does most of the focusing, then the pupil, whose size the iris sets (small in bright light, wide in the dark). The lens fine-tunes the focus, changing shape for near and far. The image on the retina is upside down and back to front. The retina's photoreceptors turn light into electrical signals: rods work in dim light and see in black, white and grey; cones need more light and see colour, and are packed most tightly in the middle, the fovea. The signals go along the optic nerve, cross partly at the optic chiasm, and reach the visual cortex in the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. The brain doesn't "turn the picture over"; it simply makes sense of the pattern.
2. The ear. The outer ear funnels sound down the ear canal to the eardrum (tympanic membrane), which vibrates. The ossicles (the malleus, incus and stapes: hammer, anvil and stirrup) pass the vibration to the oval window of the cochlea and make it stronger. Inside the fluid-filled cochlea a wave travels along the basilar membrane; hair cells near the start respond to high-pitched sounds and those further round to low ones. Their movement becomes an electrical signal, carried by the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe. The semicircular canals beside the cochlea sense head movement, for balance.

Also left out of the close-ups: the vitreous jelly that fills the eye, and the Eustachian tube that evens out the pressure behind the eardrum. In the body view, each sense's message is drawn along one simple path to the part of the brain that makes sense of it.

What it practises

• My body. How the body works, and the real names of its parts: the heart's atria and ventricles, arteries and veins (the Lub-Dub Club).
  AC9S1U01 (Science, Year 1); AC9HPFM03 (Health and Physical Education, Foundation)

The codes are from the Australian Curriculum v9 (Foundation to Year 1). Each links to the official wording.

Things to try together

• Watch each other's pupils: look near a window, then cup your hands round your eyes for a moment and look again. Did they get bigger?
• Hold your nose and taste a slice of apple, then let go. Does it taste different? Smell and taste make flavour together.
• Sit very still with your eyes shut, and name every sound you can hear.
• With eyes shut, touch a few safe things (a soft toy, a smooth spoon, a cool glass of water) and guess what they are.
• The sheet to print has the eye and the ear to label, a senses hunt (one thing for each sense) and "Which sense?" (a rainbow, a bell, a flower, an ice block and a teddy).

For every child

Not every child sees, hears, smells, tastes or feels in the same way, and some children are blind, deaf or hard of hearing. The tour never says a sense is needed, never says "everyone can", and never calls one sense better than another. It says nothing about eye or ear conditions, glasses or hearing aids. The two safety lines are kind and practical: "Sunglasses and a hat help your eyes on sunny days", and "When it's very loud, cover your ears" (no loud sound is ever played). No food or smell is called good or bad, there's no "tongue map", and touch stays gentle: hot, sharp and pain are left for a later tour about the skin.

• Every word is spoken and written, so it works with the sound on or off.
• It works with a keyboard: the arrow keys turn the child in Explore, and What's this? steps through the parts.
• Each sense's hero has its own shape as well as colour: light is a sparkle, sound is rings, smell is a puff, and a message is a zap.
• If your device asks for less motion, the camera cuts instead of flying, the page turns without the iris, and nothing spins or wobbles.

What's simplified, and why

• The eyes, ears and tongue are drawn a little big for the head, and the ear's tiny bones and cochlea much bigger than real, so they can be seen at all. Their places are true: the cochlea and balance canals deep inside the skull, beside the brain stem.
• 'Your brain makes sense of it', not 'your brain flips it over': Scientific American's point is that the brain never needs to turn the picture round.
• 'About ten thousand taste buds' is the number at birth (KidsHealth); BrainFacts gives 5,000 to 10,000.
• Five tastes, as NIDCD says ('at least five'). Umami is said as 'a savoury taste'.
• Only the five best-known senses are followed. Chapter 1 says scientists count more, such as proprioception and interoception.
• The vitreous jelly, the Eustachian tube and how light becomes a signal are left to the guide.
• Touch keeps to soft, rough, warm and cool. Heat, sharpness and pain are left to a later skin tour; the reflex is the Zip-Zap Club's.
• The close-ups are cartoons: the eye is cut in half from the side and the ear is cut open from the front, with the cochlea drawn as a flat spiral so its ripple can be seen. The rods and cones, hair cells and tiny bones are drawn far bigger and fewer than real, and the vitreous jelly is just a pale fill.

Where the facts come from

Every fact the tour states was checked against the page linked beside it.

• Scientists describe senses beyond the five, such as proprioception (knowing where your body parts are) and interoception (sensing what's happening inside the body, like hunger, thirst or needing the toilet).
  In the tour: Some scientists say you have even more senses, like knowing where your arms and legs are, or feeling hungry inside.
  Cleveland Clinic — Proprioception
• Interoception: sensing internal signals such as hunger, thirst and needing to use the toilet.
  In the tour: …or feeling hungry inside.
  Cleveland Clinic — Interoception
• "light passes through the cornea (the clear front layer of the eye)"; "The iris (the colored part of the eye) controls how much light the pupil lets in"
  In the tour: In it goes, through the pupil: the black hole in the middle of your eye.
  NEI — How the Eyes Work
• "The pupils will get smaller when the light shines near them and they'll open wider when the light is gone"
  In the tour: In bright light, your pupil gets small. In the dark, it opens wide!
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Eyes
• "The lens' job is to focus light rays on the back of the eyeball — a part called the retina"
  In the tour: The lens: the clear part that focuses the light onto the retina, at the back of your eye.
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Eyes
• "120 million rods and 7 million cones — in each eye!"
  In the tour: You have about a hundred and twenty million rods! (Rods and cones in the eye close-up.)
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Eyes
• "Rods see in black, white, and shades of gray … they are super-sensitive, allowing us to see when it's very dark"; "Cones sense color and they need more light than rods to work well"
  In the tour: Rods and cones: tiny light catchers in your retina. Rods work in dim light, and cones see colours.
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Eyes
• "special cells called photoreceptors turn the light into electrical signals"; they "travel from the retina through the optic nerve to the brain"
  In the tour: The retina turns the light into messages. Off they zip, along the optic nerve.
  NEI — How the Eyes Work
• "The lens in your eye casts an upside-down image on your retina, but you see the world upright"
  In the tour: Look! The picture's upside down! Your brain makes sense of it, so you see the world the right way up.
  Scientific American — Right Side Up
• "The occipital lobe is the major visual processing centre in the brain"; "The temporal lobe contains the primary auditory cortex"
  In the tour: To the back of the brain! / To the side of the brain!
  Queensland Brain Institute — Lobes of the brain
• "Sound waves enter the outer ear and travel through a narrow passageway called the ear canal"; "The eardrum vibrates"
  In the tour: Your ear funnels it in, down the ear canal to your eardrum. The eardrum: a thin skin that wobbles, like a drum!
  NIDCD — How Do We Hear?
• The ossicles, "hammer", "anvil" and "stirrup"; the stirrup "is the smallest bone in the body"
  In the tour: Three tiny bones pass the wobble on. The stirrup is the smallest bone in your body!
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Ears
• The cochlea is a curled, fluid-filled structure; "Hair cells … ride the wave"; "The auditory nerve carries this electrical signal to the brain"
  In the tour: Next, the cochlea: a curly part, shaped like a shell and full of liquid. Tiny hair cells ride the wave, and send a message to your brain.
  NIDCD — How Do We Hear?
• "Hair cells near the wide end … detect higher-pitched sounds … Those closer to the center detect lower-pitched sounds"
  In the tour: Hair cells: … high sounds near the start and low sounds further round. (The ear close-up.)
  NIDCD — How Do We Hear?
• The semicircular canals: "It's their job to help you balance"
  In the tour: The balance canals: three loops of liquid next to the cochlea. They help you balance.
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Ears
• "about 10 million of them in your nose"; "recognize any one of about 10,000 different smells"
  In the tour: You have about ten million smell sensors. You can tell about ten thousand smells apart!
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Nose
• "People are born with about 10,000 taste buds"; "the top of your tongue is covered with a layer of bumps called papillae"
  In the tour: Your tongue has taste buds: about ten thousand tiny tasters, in the bumps on top.
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Tongue
• "at least five basic taste qualities: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami"
  In the tour: Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami: a savoury taste.
  NIDCD — Taste Disorders
• "All regions of the tongue that detect taste respond to all five taste qualities"
  In the tour: Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami: a savoury taste. Your taste buds taste them all, all over your tongue.
  BrainFacts.org — Do different parts of the tongue taste different things?
• Taste "combine[s] with a food's aroma to produce a perception of flavor"
  In the tour: Your nose helps too! Smell and taste together make flavour.
  NIDCD — Taste Disorders
• "The nerve endings in your dermis tell you how things feel when you touch them"
  In the tour: Touching uses nerve endings: tiny feelers in your skin, right to your fingertips! … Nerve endings in your skin feel how things are: soft or rough, warm or cool.
  KidsHealth (kids) — Your Skin
• "wraparound sunglasses and a sun smart hat to provide the best protection for your eyes"
  In the tour: Sunglasses and a hat help your eyes on sunny days.
  Cancer Council NSW — Protecting your eyes from the sun
• "move away from it"; "Protect the ears of children who are too young to protect their own"
  In the tour: When it's very loud, cover your ears.
  NIDCD — Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
• "Koalas eat mainly eucalyptus leaves (gum leaves)"
  In the tour: Koala's brought a gum leaf. Sniff!
  Australian Koala Foundation — Koala diet
• Brushtail possums make "grunting, growling, hissing, screeching, clicking and teeth-chattering calls"; "nocturnal marsupials"
  In the tour: Hello! I'm Possum. I come out at night, so my senses are busy!
  The Conversation — Hidden housemates: when possums go bump in the night

Every word it says

The whole script, for reading along, or for a child who'd rather read than listen.

1. Five alive!

• Hello! I'm Possum. I come out at night, so my senses are busy!
• You have five senses: five ways your body finds out about the world. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching!
• Touching uses nerve endings: tiny feelers in your skin, right to your fingertips!
• Echidna's here from the Zip-Zap Club. Each sense sends a message along a nerve to your brain!
• Some scientists say you have even more senses, like knowing where your arms and legs are, or feeling hungry inside. Let's explore the five best-known ones!

2. Look!

• Light bounces off this waratah, into your eye.
• In it goes, through the pupil: the black hole in the middle of your eye.
• In bright light, your pupil gets small.
• In the dark, it opens wide!

3. Upside down!

• The lens: the clear part that focuses the light onto the retina, at the back of your eye.
• Look! The picture's upside down!
• The retina turns the light into messages. Off they zip, along the optic nerve.
• Your brain makes sense of it, so you see the world the right way up.

4. Listen!

• Whipbird's calling! Out goes the sound, in a wave.
• Your ear funnels it in, down the ear canal to your eardrum.
• The eardrum: a thin skin that wobbles, like a drum!

5. Tiny bones, a curly shell

• Three tiny bones pass the wobble on. The stirrup is the smallest bone in your body!
• Next, the cochlea: a curly part, shaped like a shell and full of liquid.
• Tiny hair cells ride the wave, and send a message to your brain.

6. Sniff!

• Koala's brought a gum leaf. Sniff!
• Tiny bits of smell float up to the smell sensors, at the top of your nose.
• You have about ten million smell sensors. You can tell about ten thousand smells apart!

7. Taste!

• Remember our apple? Dugong does!
• Your tongue has taste buds: about ten thousand tiny tasters, in the bumps on top.
• Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami: a savoury taste. Your taste buds taste them all, all over your tongue.
• Your nose helps too! Smell and taste together make flavour.

8. Touch!

• Stroke my fur. Soft!
• Nerve endings in your skin feel how things are: soft or rough, warm or cool.
• A smooth pebble. A cool drink.
• Each touch sends a message to your brain!
• And one day, the Tickle-Prickle Club will show you more about your skin!

9. Look after your senses

• Sunglasses and a hat help your eyes on sunny days.
• When it's very loud, cover your ears.
• Thanks for looking, listening, sniffing, tasting and touching with me. Welcome to the Five-Alive Club!

The quiz

Quiz time! Let's see what you remember. The right answers are in bold.

1. Which part of you hears? (Your ears / Your elbows / Your knees)
2. What does your pupil do in the dark? (It gets smaller / It gets bigger / It closes)
3. What's the curly, shell-shaped part deep in your ear? (A taste bud / The pupil / The cochlea)
4. Where are your taste buds? (On your tongue / On your toes / In your hair)
5. Which sense uses your nose? (Hearing / Smelling / Seeing)
6. It's a sunny day. What helps your eyes? (Earmuffs / A scarf / Sunglasses and a hat)

What it needs, and what we collect

A recent browser on a phone, tablet or computer. The first visit downloads about 11 MB, and after that it keeps working with no signal. Nothing about your child is collected: the My mob card and the sound setting are kept on your own device. The privacy page has the whole story.

More in the series: What Makes Me, with the Lub-Dub Club, the Huff-Puff Club, the Munch-Crunch Club, the Mix-Fix Club, the Zip-Zap Club and the Drip-Drop Club.