Scent/Smelling Bottles (presentation one)

What is a Montessori Smelling Bottle?

In the Sensorial area of a Montessori classroom, you will find something on the shelf called a ‘Smelling or Scent Bottle’ These bottles are very interesting to children and are used to heighten the child’s olfactory sense of smell. There are two sets of bottles with matching scents. The aim of this activity is to encourage children to match the same smelling scents.

How the first presentation is done with the Montessori Smelling Bottles

Children are introduced to the Smelling Bottles in this presentation and they learn how to match the same smelling bottles.

The directress introduces the Smelling Bottles to the child. She explains to the child that they will be smelling different scents in the bottles and finding their matching pair. She begins by taking the lids off the first of bottles and smelling each one as she does so (there will usually be two different colour dots on the bottom of each bottle, for example, pink for the first set of bottles and blue for the second set of bottles, which is also the activity’s control of error) the directress invites the child to smell them too.

She then tells the child that these bottles have a matching pair inside the box. The directress takes out a bottle from the control group and tries to find its matching partner by using her sense of smell. Once she finds the same smelling-bottle she places it next to the matching partner on the left-hand side of the mat. The directress continues in the same manner until all of the bottles have been matched correctly.

What skills does the child acquire by doing the first presentation with the Smelling Bottles?

The child becomes more familiar with different scents in their environment, the child’s sense of smell will be heightened by this presentation and it develops the child’s olfactory sense.

Looking for more Montessori activities?

Here is the full list of the Montessori tasks, including Visual and Muscle Discrimination Sense activities, Tactile Sense activities, Chromatic Sense activities, Auditory Sense activities, Thermic Sense activities, Gustatory Sense activities, Baric Sense activities, Olfactory Sense activities, Stereognostic Sense activities, Geometry activities, and Algebra activities. Just click on the activity you want to learn about to go there.