This week in the discovery room we have taken on the role of scientists and started exploring our senses.  Following on from our experiments on how sound travels and using our sense of hearing. Today we explored our sense of smell!

First we had discussions about the 5 senses, focusing on our sense of smell.  The children talked about what we use to smell and even what we could smell around us. Bellow are some comments.

“We use my nose to smell”

“My nose is very good at smelling”

“I smell soap on my hands”

“I’m smell my perfume, it’s my mummy’s favourite”

Next we set up our learning activity.  Providing 8 tubs containing orange, banana, cucumber, coffee, garlic, mint, cinnamon and ginger. These were accompanied by matching picture cards with the written text.

Next I invited the children to start exploring the tubs using their sense of smell and asking if they could identify any of them. Some of the smells were familiar and some were new scents. We made our productions on what we thought may be in the tubs and match them to the picture cards. Once they were all matched we looked inside to see if we were correct.  Below are some of the comment during the activity.

“I smelled orange and banana”

“I have never smelled ginger before”

“I smelled cucumber”

“The garlic is very smelly”

“I smelled coffee, mummy smells of coffee sometimes”

As some of the scents were new to us we had matched some of them to the wrong cards.  Now we had seen them all and we were more familiar with the items in the tubs we tried the activity again. Everyone worked together as a team to smell and share what they thought it may be. Having discussing and debates about what they thought could be in each tub. Working together this time they matched all the correct tubs to the picture cards.

Well done little scientists!

I wonder what we will explore next?