Featured Project: Discovering Scents

Over the holidays, Ms. Chelsie’s Pre-school B students explored the smells of the season and wondered how they could create a smell for their classroom. The students brought in several different items from home that they thought had a distinct smell. One of the items was a candle, which sparked interest by many. After watching a short video of a candle factory and how candles are made, the students wanted to role play and create a candle-making factory of their own.

The cafe/flower shop in Ms. Chelsie’s classroom was quickly turned into a “smelly store” or perfume store as others called it. The students made a list of what they needed, discussed how much the items would cost and divided up into what characters they would play at the shop.

After Ms. Chelsie noticed how much fun her students were having with candles, she decided that it would be a good idea to actually make candles. Before this began, the class visited a local candle factory to observe the process of candle-making. They learned that fragrant oils are used to give candles a scent and that dye is added to the hot wax/fragrance mix to give candles a color.

The children voted to make cinnamon and vanilla scents for their first set of candles. Cutting up wax was the first step in creating the candles. The class is currently still in the process of making homemade candles and are excited about how they will turn out!