Ten Scents of Christmas - Sensory Cards

After seeing how much the girls enjoy playing with the scented playdough we made recently (and how often) I decided to create a game including some other 'scents of Christmas'. At first Bubble was reluctant to smell any of the satchets, but once she got a sniff of the cinnamon (really, who doesn't like cinnamon?!) she was right into it, sorting the cards into two piles - the ones she liked and the ones that were "too yucky". I'll be elaborating on this activity tomorrow using photo cards since most of the scents are of things that Bubble has never seen before in their natural form.

Our ten scents of Christmas:

Cinnamon - ground spice
Pine Tree - cut needles from a pine tree in our park
Cranberry - crushed dried cranberries
Clove - whole dried cloves
Peppermint - essence on cotton pad
Almond - essence on cotton pad
Vanilla - essence on cotton pad
Spice - ground allspice
Chocolate - sweetened cocoa powder
Ginger - ground

I really wanted to add Nutmeg and Cherry to this list, but was all out of both nutmeg spice and cherry extract. I think they'd be a great addition though!

WE USED:

* cardboard strips (cut from a cardboard box)
* small plastic snap lock bags (available at craft and dollar stores)
* marker/texta
* sticky tape
* items to fill the bags (see list above of what we used)
* needle

These sensory cards were really simple to make - I cut strips from a box we had and used a marker to write the names of our 'scents' on each one. Each scented item was added to a bag and then taped to it's corrosponding card.

The essences were added to a cotton pad cut to fit inside the bags.

I used a needle to create tiny holes in the pine needle and cloves bags, but all of the other scents easily permeated their bags and needed no piercing.

I loved this game as much as Bubble did, the room smelt so warm and festive with all of these scents in the air.