World of play – smell
Our sense of smell is a great way to learn more about the world, and scented activities are often underutilised. By helping to develop the sense of smell in a child who has a vision impairment, you will be helping them to discover a deeper meaning about their environment.
Our sense of smell is a great way to learn more about the world, and scented activities are often underutilised. By helping to develop the sense of smell in a child who has a vision impairment, you will be helping them to discover a deeper meaning about their environment.
In your Sensory Discovery Pack!
In your Early Years Sensory Discovery Baby Pack you’ll find lavender scented Childs Farm calming massage lotion, perfect for helping your child to associate the smell with calm and comfort. In your Toddler Pack you’ll find some sensory scented sand, perfect for introducing scent games and discovery!
Follow the links for more information and ideas.
Why play with smell with your vision impaired child?
Our sense of smell is built from receptors in the nose that are connected by pathways to the brain. Connections occur via two pathways, one is a direct route to the brain, while the other takes a path that passes near the roof of the mouth. As such, this channel is connected to our sense of taste, so the sense of smell has added importance when it come to identifying, eating and enjoying food.
Studies have shown that smells can have a stronger link to evoking memories than vision – that’s even more of a reason to work on this sense with a child who has a vison impairment.
As with the vestibular sense (see our movement and balance section), children, especially ones with sensory processing issues, can display hypersensitivity to certain smells, which can have a detrimental effect on their emotional response. There are ways to help desensitise your child but keep an eye out for behaviours such as:
- Overly sensitive to smells
- Notices smells others don’t
- Anxious around certain smells
- Holds nose in response to certain scents
There are many ways in which you can adapt this sensitivity from making substitutes for certain items to avoiding cooking certain foods in enclosed spaces. Scents can be a great way of promoting calmness and relaxation. If you find your child displays quite high emotions at times, incorporating fragrances and routines that promote calmness can be a good way to help them to develop self-regulation skills.
Use the sense of smell in learning through play! You can add scented play ideas in sensory activities for toddlers so that they will start to develop connotations with certain memories and link scents to play. When they are older, they can transfer these skills into everyday life.
Getting started!
The sense of smell is important for new-born babies, as they use the scents of familiar places and people to feel secure. Using essential oils as part of a bedtime routine can be a great way to help them to develop good sleep associations with smells. Toys that have an added fragrance such as the ‘Warmies’ toy can have a similar effect. If your child is becoming unsettled at night transferring your pillowcase over to their bed and swapping back the next night (and repeating), is a proven method to help children sleep better, especially in children who have sensory processing issues and/or anxiety around bedtimes (please remember to follow midwife cot/bed setup advice with young babies). For your child, having a known scent next to them, is an effective way of getting them to return to sleep independently without needing physical reassurance.
As your child gets older using games that incorporate smells, such as scent identification activities can help to hone their sense of smell! The better this skill is, the more effectively they will use it in everyday life. Practise makes perfect, so for children who will rely on their sense of smell more than others, such as vision impaired children, working with this sense from the toddler years is a great way to help them get ahead.
Try these ways of introducing smells to get you started:
- Use certain scents to excite or relax your child
- Narrate smells when out and about, for example mention ‘it smells like fresh cut grass’ when visiting the park or ‘I’m cooking your favourite chocolate cake’ and use language to label the smell
- Smells nice versus smells good! Make this child led – let them choose from a selection of scented items and let them decide what they do and don’t like. This will help to develop discrimination skills
- Add scents to messy/sensory play activities
- Add smells to visual items to give the activity more meaning
If you would like some more information about how the sense of smell can be developed through play, please follow this link: Olfactory Sensory Activities that Kids Love – The OT Toolbox
If you would like some more information about how you can build fragrances into a bedtime routine, please follow this link: 4 Ideas for a Simple Bedtime Routine for the Kids | dōTERRA Essential Oils (home-essential-oils.com)
Perfect toys for scented play
Our Early Years Sensory Discovery Pack is a great place to start, if you don’t have one already, you can apply for one by clicking here.
If you don’t have a pack or would like to add to it, our toy directory has lots of ideas and suggestions for toys you can purchase, or items you can just find around the house.
Find out more about the RNIB Toy Guide, toy lending libraries and finding a sensory room near you.
