A friend asked me recently about whether and how using all the senses leads to better and more effective learning. The field of sensory integration is really interesting. There's a perceptual phenomenon called the McGurk effect, which is often used by scientists as an example showing that perceiving speech from others involves multiple senses. 

It's very simple - you watch a video of somebody pronouncing a phoneme, like /ga/. The audio, though, is /ba/. The brains of most people can't properly reconcile the shape of the lips and the audio, so they hear something in between - usually /da/. This happens even if you know about it! 

The effect is really strong even if you know all about it. To experience it for yourself, check out this video featuring Professor Lawrence Rosenblum from UC Riverside: 

That's the sensory integration happening in your brain. 

On the learning side, there's convincing evidence showing that multisensory environments give rise to much better learning than do unisensory environments. Studies done by cognitive psychologist Richard Mayer have shown that compared to a group that gets information through only hearing, a group that gets information through both sight and hearing have over 50% improved problem solving ability, as well as better recall even 20 years later. 

There's plenty of other evidence, and all of us should be thinking about learning environments and classrooms that go beyond just sight and hearing - what about pairing distinctive smells with lessons and using them to facilitate recall (e.g. associate the smell of lemons with math class)? Or allowing students to experience a wide variety of novel textures when learning subjects that lend themselves to that?