Art inspired by Aromatherapy and Emotional Awareness with Children

Breathe deep and what do you feel? Taking a slow deep breath relaxes mind and body bringing clarity and calming anxiety. Now take a deep breath of a high quality aromatic essential oil and all the therapeutic benefits of the oil are added to the experience. Um, I am feeling more relaxed just thinking about it!

We conducted our own little experiment to see how different essential oils made us feel. Seated in a circle on the floor I passed around smell sticks I had made from card stock. Each stick had a number on it which corresponded to my list of essential oils. I did this because I didn't want the kids to know what oil they were smelling but then I realized, silly me, they can't read yet! I got a good chuckle at myself for that one. Anyways, we passed around the sticks one at a time having fun sniffing. After everyone had their fill of smelling each stick, we tried to figure out how what we had smelled made us feel. We took the smell stick and placed it on a wheel I had drawn with the emotions calm, happy and refreshed.

It was so very cute to watch the kids smelling and feeling. When we passed around the stick with orange on it the kids got giggly and wiggly. We decided that orange made us happy! Lavender produced a group of peaceful, relaxed and quiet kids; still where they sat and reflective. We decided that lavender was a mix between refreshed and calm, but "mostly calm." We also investigated cedarwood, spearmint, cardamon and rosemary.

Here is a chart of our results:

Lavender: calmingly refreshed
Orange: happy
Spearmint: happy and refreshed
Cardamon: calm
Cedarwood: very, very calm
Rosemary: refreshed

After all of our sniffing and feeling was done, I asked the kids to each choose their very favorite oil to create a piece of art work with.

Can you guess what oil was the most popular?

"Happy!"

"Orange!"

Isn't it wonderful how children just want to be happy? What a gift it is to be around such joy. A few kids wanted lavender and one chose cedarwood. Apparently, none of them needed to be refreshed!

Next I gave them piece of paper with a drop of their chosen oil in the corner. I asked them to create a piece of art work with the emotion and smell as their inspiration.

The kids were very creative and had a blast!

Thanks to 2flowerslearning for the great post inspiration for this fun class!

Shared on: Kid's Co-op