Here is the third in a series of articles written by the talented Elaine, an Occupational therapist from littlesheeplearning.co.uk. Elaine also writes a blog that has news from Littlesheep Learning and the wider world of education and learning. She’s also featured in the free play-activities.com daily play activity emails.
When organising sensory play the sense of smell is often neglected as it takes slightly more thinking about and more organising in advance. The sense of smell is actually a lot stronger than we realise and we often link smells to items / events / memories in our life. To stimulate the sense of smell encourage your children to sniff the air and describe what they are smelling; smell flowers, foods and other odours.
Babies and young children can experience smelly play by using scented soaps during bath time and aromatherapy oils during baby massage. Scented candles or aromatherapy oil burners can be used to make a smelly environment too.
A smelling game can be made by collecting a selection of small (non see through!) pots with lids. Put a few drops of a scent onto a cotton wool ball and place a scented cotton wool ball into each pot and seal. Make a few holes in the lid so that the child can sniff the scent. Some possible scents are lemon, vinegar, vanilla, mint, lavender. Make pairs of pots to play a match the scent game.
Another smelling game is easy to set up by blindfolding children and placing familiar items in front of them. Through their sense of smell can they identify, toast, toothpaste, oranges, bananas, Marmite or strawberry jam? Can they sort daddy’s aftershave from mummy’s perfume and the baby shampoo / lotion.
Cooking is a great well to play with smells. When you are cooking with your child get them to smell the cocoa powder or ground ginger being put into the biscuits or cakes, smell the herbs and spices being put into the curry or marinade, can they smell the coffee in the coffee maker or the bread cooking in the bread maker or the fish cooking under the grill. What food smells do they like and which ones do they dislike?
Go for a smelly walk outside in a park or garden in the garden – smell herbs, flowers, compost, cut grass, the dampness after a rain shower, the smoke of a bonfire or barbecue.
Scratch and sniff books / stickers are also a great way to encourage children to use their sense of smell through incidental play.
Hopefully these ideas have helped you realise that smelly play can be just as much fun as other types of sensory play and be just as easy to initiate with a little bit of planning.
Elaine Lambe
Educational consultant
Elaine trained as an Occupational Therapist before working with children with autism on home based early intervention programmes. Through her work in the home she helped parents to support their child’s learning, implemented behaviour plans and assisted with teaching self help skills for example toilet training, self-feeding and dressing. She has also had experience of supporting children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, adapting the curriculum to make it accessible to them. After the birth of her first child, Elaine started Littlesheep Learning – www.littlesheep-learning.co.uk – an online store with an ever-growing range of teaching and learning materials for everyone who wants to help their children reach their potential.
There are so many great ideas and articles up at various carnivals in the last month. I have put together a selection of my favourites but you really have go to the carnivals themselves as this is a just a drop in the ocean with the amount of activities, ideas and articles you will find there.
So……….
Grab a lemonade, a window seat and this may take some time.
A post over at play library reminded me about travel toys as we planned our trip. This long cross country trip with a full car didn’t leave much space for kid’s things and that would be a problem…. or not.
One of the best pieces of advice I received was to buy a lap tray. We got ours from Walmart but they are everywhere. The oldest one used it for food, colouring, sticker books. Mum and Dad used it as well- bonus.
I packed a clear backpack full of activity books, sticker books, colour wonder pens and book, mini cars and action figures, dot to dot, mazes, little plastic insects (lizards)magic paint mini books, paper, pencils and colouring pencils ( I had the sharpener in my bag). There were lots of mini books from the market (sent by Grandma for the long journey) or from the local dollar store.
The oldest dipped in and out all trip. He passed over stickers, cars and paper to the little guy. Big guy hauled it in and out of the hotels and really loved finding new things to do- some alone and some with us.
DVDs- Mickey mouse was a runaway favourite.
During down time we even got in an Audio book. The Kite Runner-Fantastic book. That kept us hanging on the authors every word.
Another great piece of advice was when we stopped we always tried to find a park so the kids can burn energy. We found some great places. Tired and played out they were happy to go back into the car seats for a long time.
Post it notes- I saw this fabulous idea on a recent trip to Crater Lake. The car windows had a lovely display of pictures. The kids had drawn all sorts of things and then stuck them on the back windows. Easy clean up and compact. There were 3 different colours, so I assumed there were 3 kids in that van.
****What are you doing with your kids during those road trips? Why not leave a response below. Would love to hear your ideas.****
Also added a few different sized triangles and circles. ( happened to have them)
What to do
Make the shapes earlier.
Put one colour set in a bag that you can’t see into.
Keep the other colour set with you.
Hold up a shape. Name it. Reach into the bag and by touch alone try and locate it.
Pull it out. No matter if it’s the wrong one. Compare the shapes and ask if they are the same and what the name is. Answer any questions they can’t.
Put them side by side.
Variation: Find a bigger/smaller triangle
Let the kids be the caller and you dive into the bag sometimes. It’s fun without having to be competitive. The kids also learn their shapes quickly. They don’t need to learn the shapes. The idea is to have fun feeling in the bag and finding the same match. Hence why there’s a pentagon and a hexagon.
The little bag fits nicely into a pocket, purse or handbag. Great for those times when you’ve got time on your hands waiting for the ’someone’. See my previous post for other ideas here.
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