Week 3: Smell

Smell is amazing! This week we’ll talk about our sense of smell, how other animals’ sense of smell works, and how some things are smelly. The lesson outlines for each day are below. On Tuesday, be sure to tune into the Facebook Live Video, but all of the other activities are optional. Try them all, try just some, it’s up to you!

HERE’S THE PDF DOWNLOAD FOR ALL OF THE LESSON DETAILS OF THIS WEEK.

Need extra ideas to keep kiddo busy? We’ve got you covered. Check out our Safer and Funner pages for more.

Monday

Exploring the world through smell

1. Smelling Color: Have you ever realized how much your brain connects your sense of smell with color? In 2014, a group of scientists did a study that explored what colors we associate with different smells and how these colors could be different for people of different cultures. For example, lots of cultures thought of the colors pink and red when they smelled fruit. Meanwhile, when people across cultures smelled plastic there was a wide range of colors (including black, gray and blue). Smell different things in your home and think about what color that smell reminds you of. Then, try to draw that item in the color you associate it with! 

2. Watch: Learn about how we smell and why smells can be different for different people in How do we smell? with Rose Eveleth. 

3. How Well Can You Smell Without Seeing?: Look around your home and find things that have strong smells (the fridge, kitchen cupboards, and the bathroom are great places to start). Then, find a family member to use as a volunteer and blindfold them. One at a time, have them smell the items you found. Can they tell you what they are smelling? For round two, let your volunteer see all the items they will smell before you blindfold them. Is it easier for them to identify the smells when they know what their choices are?

4. Pet’s Nose View: If you have a pet in your life, you have probably noticed that they spent a lot of time sniffing. Take some time watching them use their sense of smell either around the house, or if they go outside. Why do you think they sniff what they’re sniffing? Are they smelling things that you can see? Would you be able to see it if it were wintertime? Why? Note: you don’t have to sniff and touch everything your pet does!

5. Scent Scavenger Hunt: Find something that you think smells good, then something that you think smells bad. Next, find something that smells yummy (don’t eat it!), something that smells wet, something that smells like summer, and something that smells like fall.

6. Nature Journal:

   1. How do different seasons smell? What words would you use to describe that smell? What makes that smell?

   2. How could you make your sense of smell a useful tool when you are exploring nature? What would your nose help you find or avoid?

7. Sit Spot: 

   1. Close your eyes and have a seat in your favorite sit spot. What do you smell? Open your eyes and focus on what you smell again. Can you smell more or less with your eyes open?

   2. Do a sit spot at dusk (when the sun is starting to set) or at night. Do you smell different things than during the day? You might need to do a daytime sit spot if you haven’t focused on smell at your sit spot before.

Tuesday

Why Flowers Smell

1. Facebook Live Video: Carolyn kicks off camp with a video introducing smell. Watch it live on our Facebook page at 2pm (the feed will start automatically). After the live lesson we’ll post the link here so you can watch it later.

2. Make Your Own Flowers: Use your art supplies to make flowers. You can use paper plates, computer or notebook paper or construction paper to build them. Then, use anything you’d like to add color: markers, crayons, paint or something else! Use pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, or more paper to create the stems and leaves on your flowers. Next, find a way to make your flowers smelly! Ask an adult if they have a perfume or cologne to spray on it. Or, head to the kitchen and find a spice to rub on the petals. Lastly, use the same art supplies to make some pollinators to visit your flowers. Bees, flies, or butterflies-- birds, bats, or moths! Which is your pick?

   1. Use the flowers and pollinators you just made to act out a skit about pollination!

3. Watch: 

   1. We know that some plants smell good to try to attract pollinators, but did you know that some plants smell yucky for the same reason? Learn about Trudy, The World's Smelliest Flower! Bonus: If you are brave enough to see how stinky a corpse flower really is, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s greenhouse AND Olbrich Botanical Gardens both have them on display. You’ll have to be patient though, because these plants only bloom  around every ten years! Keep an eye out on the news to catch the next bloom!

   2. Then, learn about a stinky plant that’s native to Wisconsin: skunk cabbage! Learn about when to look for them, why they smell the way they do, and how they can melt snow by watching Skunk Cabbage — A Spring Ephemeral.

4. Sniff It Out: The natural world around us is full of different smells, and sometimes it is enough to make it hard to smell for specific things. Let’s put your sense of smell to the test!

   1. Find something you like to eat. Have a partner hide it around the house or yard. You don’t need to hide it in a very sneaky way; just have them hide it enough that you can’t see it right away. Also, be sure that you’re not spilling food and making a mess indoors or outdoors. Once the food is hidden, blindfold yourself. With your partner making sure you are safe, can you find your food? Why or why not?

   2. Now, find something REALLY smelly (dryer sheets, orange peels, coffee grounds) and repeat this. Can you smell them? Is this activity easier inside or outside?

5. Flower Finder: Find a flower that smells really good, then find one that smells really bad. Now find a flower that has no smell (or at least one that YOU can’t smell). These could be in your garden, neighborhood, park or natural area. Bonus points if you can spot any pollinators visiting them!

6. Nature Journal: 

   1. Draw the flowers that you’ve found. If you saw pollinators there you can draw them in too. If not, imagine which pollinators would visit. You can use words to label your drawings or write some sentences about them!

   2. If you were a plant or a flower, what would you want to smell like? Would you be sweet or stinky-smelling? What animal would you want to attract (or drive away)?

Wednesday

Other Nature Smells

1. Smell Mapping Your Sit Spot: Last week, you used your sense of hearing to draw a sound map of your sit spot. This time, let’s draw a smell map! The basic idea is the same: in your sit spot and take a deep breath in through your nose, then write or draw the location of what you smell and where it’s coming from. This version of making a map might require you to get up and walk around a bit— explore the area near your sit spot and see how many different smells you can add to your map! Bonus: how different is your smell map to your sound map? Are any of the smells and sounds related to each other? Which map was easier to make for you, and why do you think that is?

2. Wet vs. Dry Smells: Did you know that “rain smell” actually has a name? It’s called “petrichor”! Do you think other things change smell when they get wet? Find something to carry water in and fill it with water—it could be a water bottle or watering can, bucket, or even a large Tupperware container. Bring it outside, then find things to smell.  After pouring a little water on it, smell it again! Does it smell different? Try this out on the sidewalk, blacktop, grass, pine needles, flowers, leaves, trees, tree bark, or whatever you like! (If you decide you want to test this out on a person, remember to ask them before you get them wet!)

3. Scent Searching! Find something outside that smells earthy, dark or spicy. Next, find something that you think smells green and fresh. Find something sweet-smelling and floral. Find something with a weak or small smell, then find something really smelly!

4. Nature Journal:

   1. Write about your favorite smells in nature.

   2. Do you remember what snow smells like? What about how the air smells before a thunderstorm? Or what it smells like when you’re near a lake or a pond? Draw how you think these smells are made.

Thursday

A Mammal’s sense of smell

1. Star-nosed You!: Without a doubt, star-nosed moles have the most unique noses in Wisconsin, and maybe even the world! Their noses are made of up to 22 little tentacles that form a star shape around their nostrils. Since moles spend much of their time underground in the darkness, they rely on different senses to make up for their bad eyesight and low light levels. Their tentacles are covered in special sensory receptors, and they are able to touch these tentacles against objects, identify them, and eat them (if it’s food) within a quarter of a second! If that wasn’t cool enough, scientists have also discovered that star-nosed moles can smell underwater!

   1. By using our hands and nose together, we can get a feel for how star-nosed moles use their sense of touch and smell together. First, get to know your new nose! Place the backs of your hands on your cheeks, one on each side of your nose. Wiggle your fingers— these are your tentacles!

   2. Next, ask a grownup for a snack (small foods like cereal, grapes, or fruit snacks are perfect for this activity!) Scatter the snack on a clean surface that you can reach easily, like a dinner table or a counter. Then, with your eyes closed, lean forward and feel around for the snack with your “tentacles”. How fast can you feel, sniff out, and eat your snack?

2. Watch: Look deeper into how dogs can sense a world beyond what we can in How do dogs "see" with their noses in a Ted-Talk with Alexandra Horowitz. Then, learn more about how cats smell with a special sniffing organ with John Bradshaw.

3. Speed Sniffers: Canines and felines are fantastic at using their sense of smell. A feline’s sense of smell can be 9-16x  greater than ours, and a canine’s can be 40x greater! They use this amazing sense of smell to gather information about the world around them. This greater focus on their senses of smell is possible to adaptations, or special skills or physical changes. One adaptation they both have is a nose that lets them breathe in through one place and out through another— do you think this allows them to breathe in and out faster? 

   1.  Ask someone to time you for a minute. During this minute, count how many times you can breathe in through your nose. Dogs can sniff up to 300 times per minute. How far off were you? Note: Forcing yourself to breathe faster than you usually do can lead to hyperventilation and make you feel dizzy or nauseated. Make sure not to push yourself too hard during this activity! Stop if you start feeling different! 

4. Hmm, Smells Familiar…: Have you ever noticed that a friend or family member’s home smells different than your own? Even rooms within the space your family lives in can smell different, depending on what you do in those rooms. After your family has made a meal, try this: go outside and take some deep breaths of fresh air. Then, go back inside and see if you notice the cooking smells more than before. Do this at different times of day or after different meals and see what you can notice. If you’re visiting other people’s homes or stores, think about what you smell and why those smells might be different.

5. Smell Collection: Find some small containers (ziplock bags, tupperware, old film canisters, empty bottles, canning jars). Next, find some strong smells. Try to catch a smell in the container by opening it near where the smell is coming from and waving the container around. Open the container later when you’re away from the smell. Did your container save the smell? If not, why do you think it didn’t work? Bonus: try to collect the smell, label the container and leave it alone for a longer time (if you are really good at being patient, try leaving it for a few days!). Come back to your smell and see if it lasted!

6. Nature Journal: Canines use scent marking to let other canines know they are around and to claim their territories. Pretend you’re a coyote or fox and walk through your neighborhood. Where would you scent mark? Draw a map to show where you walked, where you would mark and why!

Friday

Smell Deense

1. Creative: Imagine you have a stink machine. This is a special machine that can combine smells to make a new, exciting, extra smelly smell! You can pretend your stink machine looks any way you like. Maybe it has boxes to put smelly things into, maybe it has tubes for sucking up sniffs. How do the smells get out? Do they fall out the bottom? Does a fan blow them out the side? Now draw it! What smells would you combine and what would the new smell smell like? Would to make good-smelling smells or yucky smelling smells? Draw these too! Could you use your smells to keep other people or animals away, or would you want to attract them so they came closer? 

2. Watch: Learn about how and why skunks spray (and how to know when to run away) in The Chemistry of Skunk Spray. GROWN-UPs: This video contains close-up slow-motion footage of skunk anal glands. Super cool science, but we wanted to warn you! 

3. Spit Take: Many animals that use stinky smells as a defense are able to use these smells as projectiles, meaning they can spray them as a last resort! Some species of stink bugs are able to spray about a few inches away. When vultures feel threatened, they can vomit as far as 10 feet. Skunks, as you might know, can get some distance in their spray— up to around 15 feet! Do you think you can measure up? Go outside with a cup full of water and ask a grownup to set two items ten feet apart with one in the middle. Use these as a starting line and measuring markers. Get a mouthful of water and stand on the starting line. Then, spit the water as far as you can! Have someone nearby to estimate how far you spit the water (make sure not to hit them). Can you spray as far as a stink bug, vulture, or a skunk?

4. Scavenger Hunt: Look for animals that have a smell defense! Turkey Vultures are pretty common in neighborhoods or cities. Look for them circling in the sky: you’ll know they’re a vulture because they hold their wings like a “V”. Stink bugs are really easy to find inside houses during the fall and winter. Maybe you can find a few during the summer too?! Check corners or folds in hanging fabric (drapes are a great place to look). Look outside for signs of skunk. . . or actual skunks! You can look for footprints or scat (check your mammal ID sheet). If you can’t find any footprints, try drawing some on the ground with chalk or on paper with art supplies. If you can’t find scat try making it with playdough or bread dough. 

5. Nature Journal: 

   1. How do you think animals are able to produce their stinky smells?

   2. If you used stinky odors as a defense, what would your stink smell like?

1. Sit Spot: Return to your sit spot. Close your eyes and sniff. Do you notice any new smells since the last time you were here? Why? Did something change in the sit spot or are you better at noticing smells?

Banner Photo credit: tjFlex2, Flickr Creative Commons (coyote)