Sensory smell games

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Sensory Smell Games for Children

Did you know the world has more astronauts than perfumers? There are only about 100 perfumers in the world and last week I got to meet one of them. Kate Willams is the perfumer for Imperial Leather and she is passionate about fragrance. I was invited to meet her at the Imperial Leather Innovation Centre and to find out more about their SkinKind range of products.

Imperial Leather are experts in fragrance and they’ve used their knowledge to develop the SkinKind shower gels, which smell lovely but are still hypoallergenic. The SkinKind range is available in three allergen-free fragrances and have been designed to be kind to even very sensitive skins.  It was fascinating to talk with Kate and find out about her job. She talked about how designing a new perfume is a very creative process and how inspiration can come from anywhere: a flower she smells, a sculpture she sees, even a handbag she notices.

This got me thinking about children and their sense of smell. We often use textures and sound in sensory play but how often do you encourage kids to explore fragrance? We always smell ingredients when we’re cooking and I’ve blogged before about aromatherapy pots for babies but today, inspired by Kate, I’ve been playing a sensory smell game with the girls.

I took a few pieces of card (all the same colour so there were no sight clues) and rubbed something smelly on each one: a lemon, an onion, a garlic bulb, a strawberry. I sprayed perfume on the last one and then cut each card in half.  All the cards were jumbled up and placed out on the table. Could the girls sniff out the pairs of cards which matched together? Why not try the game with your children and see how you get on? You never know you could have a junior perfumer in the making!

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