At Voluntario Global, volunteers can participate in which ever project they choose as much as they like. Initiative from the volunteers is always welcome, and this week one of our volunteers showed how to take initiative in classroom activities. Claire, from France, who works in the kindergarten Trevesuras, planned a special day for the kids at her kindergarten. She invited a lady to come to come over one afternoon with fragrance samples such as fruit, food and flowers for the kids to play a guess-the-scent-game. While preparing for the game, the hardest part was keeping the energetic and curious kids out of the room that the volunteers were using to prepare the game. The volunteer standing guard had a full time job trying to stop the kids eager to get past her. The volunteer set up tables with the food that matched some of the scents the kids would smell later.

This way they would have a chance to taste and smell the scent. Finally it was time to get the first team of kids lined up and blindfolded. It was not easy because as soon as the last kids were blindfolded, the first ones had already taken off their blindfolds. In the end, one by one the kids were let into the room that had been set up for the game. In the room, the kids sat down and tried to be discreet as they sneaked a peek from under their blindfolds. Identifying the different fragrances turned out to not be that easy for the kids, but everyone had a lot of fun as they were all calling out what they thought the scent might be. The lady with the fragrances was really good at helping them out and giving them clues. When it was time for the kids to taste the things they had smelled, they had a hard time sticking to only eating one like they were told. Since there were three more teams, this became a bit of a problem, so we quickly got them out to get ready for the next team – and learning from the first round, we removed the food from the table, and in the end we also gave up blindfolding them. Then it was the next group of kids turn to guess all the fragrances, and just like the first bunch, it was hard for them to sit still and not “discreetly” take a peek. Not everyone understood the game entirely; one kid kept saying ‘fideo’ (noodles) to everything, no matter if it was oranges or freesia. All in all the kids seemed to have a really great time playing the scent guessing game.