Teach Your Children About the Sense of Smell

With your children knowledgeable on the taste sense, we can now move onto smell.

The activities below will not only be fun for you and your children but will educate them about the tool that is featured centrally on their face - their nose!

• Garden walk
A walk around your garden at this time of year could not only teach your children about their sense of smell, but also about Spring. Together with your children, smell the flowers, leaves, dirt and grass. Introduce your children to description words as you smell, such as, musky, sweet etc. 

• Home adventure
Set up a sensory table with many different foods, including: citrus fruits (lime, orange & lemons), jam, cheese, bananas, onions, mint and bread. Ask your child to close their eyes. Firstly, ask them to smell the food; ask if they know what it is. Secondly, ask your child to (also) pinch their nose to taste the food; again, ask if they recognise the food. Finally, they can open their eyes. Explain about how the different senses are important to each other and can they understand that having completed the exercises? 

Bright Hub Education have suggested a similar exercise but use canisters with holes on the top so that the children can only smell the food.

• Collages
Cut out a big 'nose' shape. Using magazines and newspapers, get your kids to find pictures of noses and stick them onto the cut out nose to make a collage. You could do this exercise with the other senses too.

• Potpourri Hunt
Another good suggestion from Bright Hub Education! Ask your children to smell a bag of potpourri and then have them search for an identical bag that you have previously hidden (within a small area). Use this exercise to also explain how animals seek their food in the wild.

• Gingerbread Men
Education World have posted 'scent of gingerbread'. After reading the story, have your children colour and cut-out a gingerbread man. After placing glue on the gingerbread man's tummy, sprinkle spices like ginger onto the glued area. They suggest using these as scratch 'n' sniff once dried.

• Plant a Sensory Garden
This is a bit extreme to teach a sense to your children, but it is a lovely idea from Lucy Gardens. Suggested plants are listed.

If you have any other methods, please let us know!