Continuing with our series on sensory activities, here is an activity for sensory awareness of smell.  Sniffing and recognizing smells may be difficult for younger kids, but not if you introduce stronger and easily distinguishable fragrances.

Just like in the hearing activities, make two sets of jars, using a total of six jars, one set with red bottles and the other set in green bottles.  Plastic spice jars are fine, and so are baby food jars. 

Place a piece of cotton wool with a few drops of a particular liquid flavoring in each pair.  Use strong easily identifiable scents like lemon, vanilla, or herbs from your kitchen – lavender, rosemary.  If you want a stronger fragrance, use lemon rinds instead, or cinnamon, cloves or other strong spices.  If you’re not using cotton balls, you’ll have to make sure the bottles are opaque.

Ask your child to open and sniff a red jar, and then, open and sniff a green jar to find the matching green jar  with the exact same scent. 

This activity can be a lot of fun, especially when it comes to the strong scents!

 
Have fun, and keep smiling.

Cupid is on his way. Here are some easy Valentine’s gift ideas that are easy enough for 3-5 years olds to make on their own. They require minimal supervision from you, and take just 5 minutes to create tops.

Photo Frame
Take a page out of a magnetic photo album, and cut a heart shape out of it.

Open the clear cover, and stick a picture of the recipient in the center, leaving the sides blank.

Decorate the sides with heart stickers, heart shapes cut out of colored paper and colored cellophane paper.

Leave a little space at the top of the page for the cover to stick to the page when you close it.

Once you have everything arranged the way you want it, close the clear cover shut.

Place a piece of magnetic tape on the back of your instant photo frame.

Valentine ’s Day Bouquet

Cut strips of green poster board into 12 inch x 1 inches sizes.

Take a few shiny bows, and stick to the top of each strip. Decorate some colored tissue with heart shaped stickers, and wrap the “bow flowers” in the decorated tissue paper to form a bouquet.

Tie a bow with a satin ribbon to secure the bouquet. A perfect gift for Daddy!

Valentine’s Day Book Marks

Cut heart shapes out of craft foam, or buy packages of pre cut craft foam from crafts stores. The pieces should be around four inches in diameter.

Decorate these foam hearts with smaller craft foam pieces in star shapes or more tiny hearts.

Take a craft stick, and write a Valentine ’s Day message to the recipient.

Happy Valentine’s day, Mommy.

I love you, Daddy.

The message should fit inside the craft stick.

Glue the craft foam heart to the top of the crafts stick.

A Valentine’s Day Candle

Take a thick red candle, and hammer a few rhinestones or metal studs in a heart shape or some other pattern. Choose a thick candle that can hold a heart shape etched on it easily.

Show your child how to hammer in the studs, so they are safely inside the candle.

Add your old pierced earrings to decorate the candle by hammering these in too.

Clay “I Love You” Card

Take some white air dry clay, and flatten it with a rolling pin till it’s about a quarter of an inch thick.

Use a cookie cutter to cut out a heart shape from the clay.

Decorate the clay heart by taking brilliantly colored jewels and beads, and pressing them into the clay. Take care not to smash the clay.

Cut out pieces of red and white textured paper into squares, the red one smaller then the white square.

Use thick crafts glue to stick the red paper on top of the white one.

Stick the clay jeweled heart on the red textured paper.

Enjoy!