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 ;-)

Balloon Rockets

A few days ago, I posted simple science experiment involving color changing carnations (click here if you missed it).  This too is very easy, involves materials you most likely have at home, practically no set up is required, no mess is made, and Nick LOVED it.  We did it over and over and over.  We'd still be doing it, if I hadn't said enough after about the twentieth time.  The photos are so funny.  I put my camera on sports setting to capture the actual experiment, then Nick's reaction.  Nick is hysterical, his facial expressions cracked us up.  I am going to attach photos of the experiment first, so you can duplicate it with your kids, if you'd like or just so you know what exactly we were doing, then a bunch of Nick's face. 

Enjoy!

Materials needed:
Two chairs
String (around 10 feet I'd say)
A balloon
Tape
A clothespin (not necessary, but does make it easier)

Brief explanation of the experiment:
You thread the string through the straw and tie the string to two different chairs levelly, making sure that the string is taught and straight.  You blow up the balloon and use a clothespin (or something similar: chip clip for example) to keep the balloon from deflating while you tape the balloon to the straw.  Once the balloon is taped to the straw (parallel to the ground), have your munchkin remove the clothespin, and watch the balloon shoot along the string.

Visuals help:

Nick removing clothespin from balloon.

It takes a second to shoot off because
I twisted the end of the balloon so air wouldn't seep out.

Then off it goes.

And this balloon is pretty big, so it would have kept going if the string had been longer,
so obviously the balloon size and length of string matters.

So, you get the idea.  Now, I take a bunch of pictures of his face.

It made such a loud noise that he let it go without taking the clothespin off fully.
It still went forward with some air escaping, just not as fast.



Again, again!
And this balloon didn't even shoot forward, it spun around the string,
 but stayed in place.

 

 

Whoa! It didn't move.

 And then he just wanted to release a balloon from his hand.  Equally, funny faces though.

 

And again!

 I told you we'd be here all day!

Next time, we'll propel a car!



If you liked this experiment, come see our color changing carnations here.