What’s that Smell? A Guessing Game for the Whole Family

When we were kids, my mom used to set up a guessing game for us for Girl Guide events or birthday parties. We called it “What’s that Smell?” or the Smelling Guessing Game.

So, when we were having family over for dinner and I wanted to have a family-friendly activity for us to do afterwards, I knew just the game.

I phoned my mom, and lo and behold, she still had the tiny glass jars, still numbered, that we used in our childhood.

You might be able to find small jars at the dollar store, or I would recommend using dixie cups, or any other small containers you can find.

Fill each jar with a liquid. This was the fun part, and Mom and I brainstormed for a long time and probably could have filled dozens of jars! We happened to have 17.

I used:

Pancake syrup
Milk
Maple flavouring (this was too close to the pancake syrup, so use one or the other)
Laundry detergent
Vinegar
Soya Sauce
Windex
Water
Bleach
Almond Flavouring
Vanilla
Lemon Juice
Cherry juice
Coffee
Peppermint extract
Beer
Mr. Clean

Other possibilities were

Honey
Paint thinner
Molasses
Wine
Orange Juice
Mouth wash
Pickle Juice
Apple Cider Vinegar
Apple Juice

What else can you think of?

I set the bottles up around the table, each with a numbered tag. Each person had a paper and a pencil and spread themselves around the table. We rotated around, smelling the contents, and writing down our guesses.

DO NOT TASTE the contents! I made this very clear!

Some of the liquids were really hard to guess, especially the water!

The kids had a lot of fun doing this, and could guess most of the smells. The youngest, at 7, needed to be paired with an adult.

We spent about 15 minutes smelling the contents before people stated their guesses and I revealed the answers. The best score was 14/17! But, really, it was all friendly competition!

This is a fun, multi-aged family activity that only takes a few minutes to set up, and is a fun challenge for the nose!