Smell YA Later!

So yesterday and today I got to teach 3rd grade sex ed. Now before you freak out, sex ed in 3rd grade looks more like understanding the 5 senses and keeping everything PG. 4th and 5th grade, well that's a whole different story that we can get to later. I have been assigned the role of smell educator. AKA I freaked out and pulled my resources. My plan was to talk about smells in general, educate the kids on how smelling works, let them understand how taste and smell are connected, then let them go smell things and try to guess what they are. In theory it would be fun and they would love it and smell would be not boring. In reality IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER THEN THAT!!!!!! I honestly couldn't have imagined anything better. Their faces when they released their noses and let the jelly bean flavors explode in their mouths were CLASSIC. It was truly amazing to them and I loved it. They totally jumped on board when learning how smelling works, including taking a risk to try to say Olfactory Epithelium... Oh yeah, you try to say that, its not easy. When it came to the hands on try to smell different things portion the kids were HILARIOUS. As it turns out lavender smells like earwax to kids and eucalyptus smells like medicine. I felt so accomplished knowing how much fun it was for them. I couldn't have asked for anything better. In terms of 4th and 5th grade sex ed, well the 4th graders read a book called "hair in funny places" but it's so scarring that they can't talk about it. They are totally afraid and scarred for life. The 5th graders have egg babies aka RAW eggs that they have to carry around. Feed, diaper change, burp, and keep generally safe RAW eggs. Needless to say I'm afraid of what Friday looks like when they break but oh well... At some point the 5th graders have to watch a video of a live birth and let's just say... I don't want to know about that ;-)