Tu B’Shevat Montessori Smelling Bottles

Isn’t it fun to test out different senses with activities, like our kids’ sense of smell with these Tu B’Shevat Montessori Smelling Bottles? We’ve done a blind-folded Smell This! Seven Species experiment before (and it was great!) but this year I wanted to do something a little more formatted and focused.

The idea behind Montessori Smelling Bottles is to heighten children’s sense of smell and encourage them to match the same smelling scents. It’s part of the Montessori sensorial component. And it’s so easy to make your own version!

While our previous Seven Species smelling experience was a fun way for the kids to guess the seven species based on their scent, today’s Tu B’Shevat Montessori Smelling Bottles activity really encouraged them to focus on separating out the different smells and matching the similar ones. It’s a fun Montessori-aligned activity with our own Jewish twist!

What You’ll Need

Containers. You can choose how many you need based on how many scents you want the kids to match, then double that number for how many containers total you need
Red and blue tape (if clear containers) or dot stickers (if opaque containers)
Nature items or essential oils derived from plants to get that Tu B’Shevat feeling
Cotton balls if using essential oils
Kleenex, tissue paper or some other way to cover the nature items if using those

Putting It Together

If you’re using clear containers like we did, cover the base of half of them with red tape and the other half with blue tape. If you’re using opaque containers do half with red dot stickers on the bottom and half with blue. And if you don’t care if your kids see the shape of the items then you don’t have to worry about covering the base with tape and just stick a piece of tape on the bottom of the containers. You want to be able to separate out the pairs and the color coding helps with this.
Add a matching scent to a red container and its pair to a blue. If you are using essential oils, squeeze some drops onto a cotton ball and place it in the container. If you’re using nature items, you will want to disguise their shape and sound somehow. We used a separated Kleenex. When the Kleenex was unseparated, its smell overpowered the nature item. You will want to use fresh, strongly scented nature items. We used rosemary, which worked quite well, and mint. The mint only worked when it was fresh, then the smell quickly died off. You will want to place a piece of opaque paper, tissue paper, plastic, cloth or something else over your nature item and still be able to smell it.
Separate out the red and blue containers.
Choose one blue container and open it. Let your child smell it. Set it aside. Then open one red container at a time, and smell the contents, until the child finds a match with the opened blue container. Once a match has been found, set the matching pair aside and move to the next blue container.
Once all matches had been found, I also challenged the kids to guess what nature items they had smelled. We also discussed how Tu B’Shevat celebrates nature and how all these nature items came from plants.

Finished & Loving It!

The kids approached this activity like a game and it kind of is! They thought it was great fun and giggled nonstop as they smelled the essential oil containers, which were much stronger than the fresh-from-nature items.

I did half essential oil and half nature items. I knew the essential oil ones would be easier to prepare for this activity. But I loved the idea of them smelling and identifying fresh from-the-ground (and our garden!) nature items. I also wanted them to have the image of a plant in their mind to connect it to the bigger picture of Tu B’Shevat.

This activity was very simple to set up and has so many possibilities for different content. It could be a wonderful child-led activity where they choose the nature items. They prepare them and then either siblings or parents have to try to match and identify the smells.

I liked covering the bases with the different colored tape so it was easy for us to separate out and then attempt to make matches. But you could make it more challenging by not so easily identifying the different groups of scents.

We are such huge fans of Tu B’Shevat and celebrating nature and these Tu B’Shevat Montessori Smelling Bottles were a really fun way to bring nature into our house, our learning and our holiday experience.