It is day three of our five senses week and today we are learning about the sense of smell! I will be honest, I had to spend a minute thinking about how I could teach toddlers about the sense of smell without just passing around items and sniffing them! Which is totally valid way of teaching smell, but I wanted activities that would last a little longer and be just as engaging as our taste and touch days!

Want to see the first two days of our 5 senses week? Don’t worry I detailed everything in these blog post:

• Day 1: Touch - Click here to read more
• Day 2: Taste – Click here to read more

Ok back to today! I start our morning by reading Baby Loves the Five Senses: Smell. I grabbed every book in this series and love all of them for teaching the 5 senses.

You can find all the books I am reading during our 5 senses week on my Amazon Storefront here.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases 

Color And Smell

Our first activity of the day is a Color and Smell activity. You will need to have scented markers or crayons for this center. I grabbed the 12 pack of Mr. Sketch scented markers on Amazon and loved them! They are thicker markers which made it easy for the kids to hold and color with.

I printed my Color and Smell coloring pages. I suggest printing on cardstock because the kids will want to color and hold up the paper without it falling apart.

The kids got to choose whatever coloring sheet they wanted. Each sheet has a different item on it that matches one of the scented markers.

Once they pick their coloring page I helped them find the matching marker and they colored the item.  It is important to remind the kids not to smell the marker itself. Once the page is colored, they get to hold it up and smell it. Think of a scratch and sniff sticker. Same idea but we are using the marker to create the scent.

Now we get to decide if we like the smell. If we do we color the happy face, if we don’t, we color the sad face.

The kids thought it was sooooooo funny to say they all smell gross, but I know they loved them haha!

I won’t lie, half of the markers do not smell like the fruit they state they smell like, but they all have a distinct scent. And that was my goal. I wasn’t trying to teach them what a strawberry smells like, but instead focus on our sense of smell and if we like smells or not.

Scented Shapes (Square)

I used the left-over Jell-O powder from yesterday's taste test,  to set up our second activity of the day by making a scented shape! We are focusing on the square shape this month. I printed the craft page in my 5 senses week and set out a small amount of Jell-O powder.

Before you ask the tray in the picture is from Target from years ago and I am so sad because they have never restocked them. If you find them let me know cause I want more of them! They are amazing.

Ok back to activity! I gave the kids a glue stick to trace the square on the page. We then sprinkled the Jello-O powder onto the craft page and left it to dry. You can hang these around your room once they are dry and your little ones can go up and smell their craft page. Again think scratch and sniff!

If you want to do these activities with your kids, you can find all the printables in my 5 Senses Activities Preschool Weekly Themed Curriculum