Guess the herb

Activity

Smell and taste different edible leaves to try and match the leaves to the plant it came from. 

  • Estimated time: 30 minutes
  • Location: Outdoors & Indoors
  • School term: All year round
  • Level of experience: No experience needed
  • Subject(s): Science

Learning objectives

  • Learn to identify a range of different smells and tastes from edible herbs

Essential background information

Preparation

Bring in some supermarket herbs in pots or collect some stems of herbs from the garden and keep them fresh in jam jars of water. Arrange the plants and jam jars in a row.  

Cut or crush leaves from each herb and place in a separate lidded pot, making sure you make a note of which herb is in each pot.  
Arrange the lidded pots in front of the herbs but muddle them up.

Equipment

  • A range of herbs
  • Small lidded pots
  • Blindfolds

Step by step

  1. Ask your group to look at the different herbs you have collected and placed in a row.
  2. Let them explore these plants, smelling and tasting their leaves.
  3. Ask them now to open up the lidded pots in front of the herbs, one at a time, and smell them. Invite them to taste the leaves inside if they want to.
  4. Now ask them to match the pots to the plants they came from.
  5. Check to see if they have matched up the right pot and herb.
  6. Do the smells remind your group of anything? (E.g. Minty smell = toothpaste)

Hints & tips

  • You could try using blindfolds so the pupils are only using their sense of smell or taste to match the pots to the plants.
  • Use this activity as part of Sensory Sensations class growing topic.