VIDBE-Q 2025 Volume 70 Issue 2
Strategy 7: Scents
Teachers may also help students independently identify different colors by
providing paints that incorporate scents. To help students best distinguish the
different colors, each scent should be distinct and associated with a single color
(Platt & Janeczko, 1991). For example, orange paint can be orange-scented, yellow
paint can be lemon-scented, and red paint can be cherry scented. Teachers can
easily create their own scented watercolors, tempera, or acrylic paints by mixing in
essential oils, imitation flavoring, or Kool-Aid into their paint. Alternatively, some
commercially available products include Crayola Silly scents, Crafty Dab Scented
paint markers, Scentos scented paint dabbers, and CraZart scented CraZgels kids'
paints.
Strategy 8: Tactile Paints
Alternatively, teachers could provide students with art materials that
associates each color with a different tactile element. For example, Kandalam and
colleagues (2019) used six textured crayons that had a specific textual quality
associated (i.e., rough, sticky, hard, smooth, slippery, and soft) with each color.
When working with paints, teachers could mix-in small items that have unique
textures with each color or allow students to incorporate textures into their own
paint colors. Items that can be incorporated into tempera or acrylic paint to create
textured paints include sand, grains, and tiny foam balls. Teachers could also
