If you have a Montessori homeschool classroom or are planning to start one in the fall, you’ve probably been focusing on finding and/or making Montessori materials. A Montessori sensorial material you can make easily and inexpensively for preschoolers at home (or school if you’re a preschool teacher) is a set of smelling bottles.
DIY Montessori Smelling Bottles (Photo from Counting Coconuts)
Counting Coconuts made an attractive set of smelling bottles using a spice bottles.
DIY Montessori Smelling Bottles (Photo from To the Lesson!)
To the Lesson! has directions for making an attractive set from another type of spice bottles.
Homeschool Mo also used glass bottles and extracts. She tells about her experiences with them as well.
Carrots are Orange used glass bottles and extracts. She adds ideas for presentation.
Because some of the extracts used for the scents can be identified by sight, you will need a blindfold for the activity or could hide the cotton balls in muslin tea bags found in natural food stores (a suggestion in one of the comments at To the Lesson!).
September had easy-to-prepare DIY smelling bottles using baby food jars, colored construction paper to hide the jar contents, cotton flour sack cloth, and herbs. (The blog is no longer available.)
Montessori Primary Guide and Montessori World have directions you can use to present the smelling bottles.
Smelling Bottle Extension (Photo from Leptir)
Leptir has a wonderful extension of the smelling bottles by matching the bottles with pictures of the fruits and plants that are the source of the extracts/essential oils.
Mama’s Happy Hive has Montessori-inspired scent bottles for babies and toddlers.
I have a post on “How to Make Your Own Montessori Materials” with resources for making lots of other Montessori materials.
Have fun – and let me know about your DIY Montessori projects! 🙂
Linked with Mommy Club Resources and Solutions and Every Day Sensory Play, Discover and Explore: Five Senses.
Hello Deb! Thanks so much for featuring my Smelling Bottles (and my blog). I always enjoy your posts and appreciate your ideas! Hope you are enjoying your summer…. Take care, Sasha
Thanks so much for your kind words, Sasha – and for the wonderful ideas you share through your blog! I’m having a fabulous summer and I hope you are, too. Congratulations on passing your Oral Exams … I’m sure that makes your summer all the better! 🙂
I have Smelling bottles from Nienhuis, but I made extension: matching bottles with photos (end of the post: http://leptir-mojpribor.blogspot.com/2009/10/bocice-za-percepciju-mirisa.html )
Nataša
Thanks, Natasa! I really appreciate you sharing your link – I love that extension! I added your post link and photo to the post above! 🙂
Thanks Deb 🙂
I definitely need to make time to make smelling bottles (among everything else I have to plan) for our next school year. Busy time of year! 🙂 Thanks for the idea.
Thanks for your comment, Lori! I can imagine you must be very busy! I always found this time of year busy with preparations when I was a Montessori teacher – even when I didn’t have kids yet. Good luck with your planning and projects! 🙂
Ok so I’m heading to the store now LOL. I love ideas that are quick, simple and educational. My children will love this and I will be sure to blog about our experience and link it back to here! Thanks for the awesome idea
Thanks, Ameera! I’ll love to hear about your experiences with smelling bottles! 🙂
My boys LOVE smelling bottles! We made our own set from glass salt shakers we picked up at the dollar store. To keep the scent in, we just put a cicle label on top that they peeled back when they wanted to do the job. For color coding we added star stickers to the bottom of our shakers. I wish I had a picture to share with you – just another idea for those who might not have an excess of spice jars around! 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing your idea, Heidi! It’s great to have other options! 🙂
Hi Deb,
I added this link to the bottom of my recent post about Sensorial. Thanks so much!
Ann
Thanks so much for linking to my post, Ann! 🙂
I loved seeing this in the email! Great ideas and love the tutorials.
Thanks so much, Joanna! And I appreciate your being on my mailing list! 🙂
What great ideas and a good reminder that I need to do that lesson with the boys soon. Thanks for linking up to Montessori Monday!
Thanks, Nicole! I always found that smelling bottles were a popular activity. I think a blindfold always added fun to the activity, too. Thanks for hosting Montessori Monday! 🙂
What a fantastic way to get the senses going. What a great round-up of ideas! Thank you for linking up with us on The Sunday Showcase
Thanks Aimee! And thanks for hosting the Sunday Showcase! 🙂
Thanks for the wonderful post and the link-up!
Thanks for your kind comment, Maureen! It was my pleasure to add your post! 🙂
Dear Deb, I am always looking forward to your posts. You are such an inspiration for me to give my kids in the kindergarten the best of experiences.