Scent Jars

This activity was inspired by a book that I purchased at the annual book fair at my son's school.  It is a wonderful book, by the way.  It's called How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin.  As most of you know my son is attending Montessori school (yes, we love it) but regardless of where your child is (or isn't) in school it has wonderful activities for young children.  I read it cover to cover and enjoyed it (it gets 4 1/2 stars out of 5 on Amazon, check it out here if you'd like).


Scent Jars

The idea behind the scent jars is to place scents on a cotton ball and have your child guess what it is.  Yeah, it's that simple.  I chose extracts from the kitchen cabinet, wet the cotton balls and placed them inside empty, new spice jars ($1 from World Market).  I wanted to have a visual component for Nick to look at and match the jar to, so I drew an orange, lemon, cinnamon sticks, a peppermint candy, and a vanilla flower, as those were the extracts I chose.  I also wrote the name of each below the visual representation.  I did have to explain what the flower was (the vanilla) and the sticks (cinnamon).

Nicholas really enjoyed doing this and we did it several times over and over.  He loved picking up and opening the jars (they were the perfect size for his little hands).  He smelled them each intently, pointed at what he thought he was smelling, before placing the jar down on the picture.  He had difficulty with distinguishing between the lemon and the orange which surprised me at first, but he hasn't really had much exposure to lemons, I suppose.

This activity was so fun for him because it is different than our normal arts and crafts, or the science-y sort of things we normally do.  I would highly recommend it.  You could also just chose objects and blindfold your young one.  Food is good, but so is baby powder or shampoo, etc.  Fragrances they are familiar with.  It is great watching them trying to place an everyday aroma when they can't see it.  The excitement at knowing they know what it is, and the giggling at them trying to figure it out.  Such fun!

The set up.

Opening each latch so carefully.

A good whiff.

"That's mint!"

And another.

Ooh, got 'em all now.

It also brought up an interesting conversation about where the extract came from.
  I brought out visuals to explain.

N found it all very fascinating, and of course, wanted to touch and smell one of the cinnamon sticks.

And don't worry...
  Said cinnamon stick was then discarded ;-)