Smell Like a Honeybee
Help your child appreciate the special smelling talents of honeybees, while learning how “unbeelievably” important they are to the natural world!
Before You Play
Ask your child what he thinks about bees. His response will likely focus on their stingers, which is certainly understandable! Let him know that bees are incredibly fascinating creatures that the world desperately needs. Without bees doing their pollinating work, a gigantic portion of our fruit, nut, and vegetable supply could disappear completely. Pollination helps plants make seeds which become baby plants. Bees’ sense of smell helps them to spread pollen from plant to plant. Fun fact: A honeybee has a sniffer 100 times more powerful than a human’s and can help it locate scents miles away.
Materials
Directions
Line up a series of containers at the end of your kitchen table, one container for every smelly item you plan on using.
Place a smelly sample in each container. Cover them tightly with plastic wrap and then use the sharp pencil to poke several small holes in the top to make smelling the goodies possible but not too easy. Make less holes for the really pungent stuff like cinnamon and more for flowers, nuts, and mint candies. Repeat the process down at the other end of your table. If you have a round table then you’ve got all curves and no ends, so just make the best of it!
Make sure that when you are done, you have two of each sample (one on each end of the table) so that your child can find the match. Now jumble up the order of one set of containers to make this smelling activity a true challenge!
Have your child take a good strong sniff of the first sample at one end of the table, inhaling the scent through the small holes in the plastic wrap. Ask him what it smells like. He’ll need to store that smell away as he buzzes his way to the other side of the table where you’ve placed the second set of samples. Now, see if he can be like a bee and locate the matching scent.
Let him continue fluttering from side to side until all the smelly matches have been discovered. Talk to him about the different scents–which ones is he able to identify? Which smell is the strongest? Which is his favorite?
Jeff Bogle is an at-home dad who writes humorously about parenting and “all things childhood” on his site Out With the Kids. He is married to an adorable redheaded gal and has two lovely little ladies, who provide him with countless hours of humorous in-home entertainment, and who get to hear, see, and play with more cool stuff than you can possibly imagine.
Science