Making Sense of Scents is a new educational program for children in grades 3 through 5:
The power of scent is a remarkable thing, yet until fairly recently a clear understanding of how it worked remained a mystery. The Sense of Smell Institute, together with The Weekly Reader, The Fragrance Foundation and Les Christophs worked together to develop a fun, inter-active and highly educational kit, “Making Sense of your Scents!” to help students understand how the sense of smell works and the important role it plays in their daily lives. This is a first-of-its-kind program.
“Making Sense of Your Scents” is an educational program reaching out to 5000 schools across the country. 5000 packages have just been mailed to 3rd to 5th grade teacher’s in 5000 schools across the United States, containing a colorful 8 page brochure, a 4-page teacher’s guide and 4 reproducible activity sheets for students.
The packet also contains a vivid, two-sided poster that highlights a map of the world where scents can be found - and two sets of really fun rub & sniff stickers for students to guess the scent and discover where it comes from on the map. An increased awareness of the many aromas that surround them daily can also provide a wonderful opportunity for students to share their different backgrounds and knowledge via scents that are unique to their cultures.
According to Terry Molnar, Executive Director of The Sense of Smell Institute, “the sense of smell is an important component of the nervous system. Because it is intricately linked to memory, learning, and emotions, it can positively influence our quality of life, sense of well being and mood.”
All the activities in the packet have been developed by the educators at Weekly Reader Publishing, with input from The Sense of Smell Institute and Les Christophs to meet U.S. Education Standards for grades 3- 5.
You can find out more at the Making Sense of Scents page at the Sense of Smell Institute. (via press release)
That’s very cool. Another generation of future perfumistas being trained at an early age.
Yep!
What a great idea! I sure hope one of those packets is sent to my elementary school —that map will get sent to be laminated and since I do all the laminating; I’ll get to check it out. The weekly readers always have such fun stuff, I know the kids will love an issue about smells (kids are much more interested in smells than most adults) It’ll be interesting to see which teacher ends up with possession of the kit……fight in the teacher’s lounge!!!!
Let us know how those scratch ‘n sniff stickers are!
Well, I’ll ask how they are but I’m not entirely sure that I want to scratch and sniff where 120 3rd graders have been scratching and sniffing (ack) –but I’ll be sure to get a review!
I think they’re separate sticker pages for each student…not on the poster itself.
Yay! I knew Laudamiel had a project like this cooking along and am so glad to see it come to fruition. And good on the Fragrance Institute for supporting it.
We should smell education just like we have music and art and creative writing!
Agree
Hey, if my 4th-grader doesn’t come home with a Weekly Reader about smells, I’m going to see if I can order it myself. Neat stuff!
Let us know if you do see one!
Very cute project. Love news like this.
Me too!
What a dastardly, cunning strategy to create the next generation of perfumistas! Actually, I think they should do one for even younger kids as well; I know I was obsessed by smells at a very early age (I used to refuse to read books whose paper smelled bad). And I have such strong memories of a perfume exhibit at the local natural history museum that had little doors you opened to smell civet, ambergris, myrrh, etc. (of course we thought they were all disgusting, but we always wanted to smell them anyway!).
LOL…would be funny if the scratch n’ sniff stickers were Shalimar & whatnot!
Great learning tool!
Next lesson should be on how to squirel money away from the candy budget or how to be extra nice to grandma($$$) to be able to buy fron a niche line…
Yes, that should be in the high school version