July 29th, 2007 Sensory Play 3 Smell Posted by Melitsa in Articles, Education, Good reads, Sites to visit, play activities

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.

Sensory play an introduction

Sensory play 2 sight

Sensory Play 3 Smell

Sensory play 4 sound

Sensory play 6 Touch

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.

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