For Big and Middle, this is an entertainment center while I work with the other kids. But it’s “assigned” for Little. He has serious sensory defensiveness about smells. So, after a bit of exercise and a treat, we match the smelling jars together.
Here’s how you make your own set.
1. Find a friend who makes soap and keeps essential oils. If you don’t have access to a variety of essential oils, raid your own spice cabinet for extracts, your medicine cabinet for menthol rub, alcohol, or whatever else you have around with an interesting scent.
1. Buy a tray, some cotton balls, small stickers, and one or more packs of wedding bubbles from the Dollar Store. If you don’t already have some construction paper or foam to line the tray, get that too. Anything you can do to make the set up more beautiful makes it more attractive to the child.
2. Dump out the bubble solution and pull off the wand under the cap.
3. Stuff each container with a cotton ball.
4. Mark the containers on the bottom into matching sets. I used stickers.
5. Mark the tops of one of each set. This allows the child to proceed through the exercise in an organized way. If he lines up the set with marked lids, he knows he has one of each scent in the line and the unmarked containers are the matches with no doubles. Again, I used nine identical stickers. Some other marking system may be more attractive, but what are ya gonna do?
6. Into each set, dropper some essential oil or extract.
If you did this correctly, you should now have matched sets, identifiable by the marking on the bottom so the child can check his work.
For the first round of smelling work, only put out three or four sets and make sure they really contrast. Be sure to show the child how to progress through the work in an orderly fashion; see this link HERE.