Today we talked about our sense of smell. I had 6 film canisters with scented cotton balls in them. The scents I used were perfume, vanilla, lemon essential oil, peppermint essential oil, a peeled garlic clove (under a cotton ball), and some coffee grounds (under a cotton ball). The children passed each scent around and then tried to guess what it was. We talked about how they used their noses and their sense of smell to figure it out.
After the activity, we read the book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. This classic tale about a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight was perfect for today’s lesson. I love the simple black and white drawings and the fact that Ferdinand takes the time to stop and smell the roses so to speak. I think sometimes we all need to just sit quietly and smell the flowers, too.
After our story, we made these smelly flowers. This page will go in the children’s five senses book. I will share the downloads next Friday. Anyway, the children painted these sunflowers and we used glue and coffee crystals for the brown centers. I just checked on them and they do smell. 
I had seen this painting technique on several sites, so I am not sure who to give credit to. To make the sunflowers the children dipped the bottom of an empty 2-liter bottle into yellow paint. They used it like a stamp on their papers. Then, they used a paintbrush to paint a green stem and some leaves. Next, they turned the bottle over and dipped the cap in some glue and stamped it into the center of each flower. I helped them carefully sprinkle some coffee onto the glue. I will shake off the excess when they dry.
Our final sense of smell (sounds better than smelly) activity was to play with some scented play dough and alphabet cookie cutters. The children really liked the smell of the two types of play dough I got out. They used our chocolate play dough and kool-aid play dough.
We had a great morning and will continue our study of the five senses by doing activities about the sense of sight. Have a great weekend.
