Sensory Bottles

I thought I would write up a quick post about our sensory bottles. My kids LOVE them! (I kind of like to play with them too.) I just used small plastic Pepsi bottles with the labels removed. You can either glue the lids on or screw them on tightly. I chose not to glue. Below are the bottles that I made.

 Water and spikey balls. The balls sink when you flip the bottle over. 

 Rainbow rice "I Spy" I put several small items in with the rice. Sparkle loves to turn the bottle to find different things. 

 Green water and Oil. I could have used more oil and less water. But it still works just fine. 

 Water and soap. Shake to make bubbles or "snow"

 Beans and pipe cleaners. This one was simply for the noise factor. I just put the pipe cleaners in to give it some color. 

 Cut up straws. At first this one was really neat. I was just putting straws in to make a softer noise. After I did it I realized that if you shale the bottle up the straws stick to the side from static. *Note: after awhile this will stop happening."

 Hair gel and glass stones. 

Piper cleaners. I don't have the magnet yet, but this one uses a magnet on the outside, to make the pipe cleaners stick to the inside of the bottle. 

The possibilities are truly endless.  I also have some bigger ones filled with water and other random things. Ribbon, beads, pom poms, pipe cleaners, buttons. Those are fun b/c some things sink and some float. I made those ones with bigger bottles though, and they are a little heavy, so they don't get played with much.

Even though my kids play with them a lot, I just realized that I don't have any pictures. 

I hope this was helpful, for you to make your own. If you have some that you have that are different than mine, please leave a comment about them. :)

Spring Sensory Bins

I think this in my favorite set of bins so far. My idea was to make two bins, one for each child. One more messy for my older tot, and one filled with safer things for younger tot. Little did I know that they would have their own plans, and actually prefer to play with the other persons bin.

 

What's in the bins?

• Easter grass
• rainbow slinky
• plastic eggs
• cookie cutters
• small baskets
• small pink cups with flower base
• paper eggs cut from paint chips
• bendable bunnies
• a wind up chick
• wind up car
• pastel pom poms
• pastel rainbow rice

 He loved the grass

 But loved the rice a whole lot more. 

They really enjoy them and ask to play with them several times.

Spring eggs

I set up the stuff last night, so that we could do our spring eggs this morning. Our family doesn't do the traditional Easter stuff that the world does. We celebrate Resurrection Sunday and the Rising of our Lord Jesus Christ, for our salvation. However, I still enjoy the fun things that offered around this time of the year. We choose to call them Spring things, instead of Easter, and do them either week before, or the week after.

I was asking Sparkle the other day why we colored eggs. She wasn't able to tell me a reason. I didn't think she would have one, being only 2.5, but it's always fun to ask anyways to see what she will come up with. Here is my explanation, if you would like to use something like it while coloring eggs with your children. And it's not going to be word for word what I actually said, (because I don't remember), but it will give you an idea.

I talked about how all winter long everything is, dark, and grey, and brown. There are no leaves, or pretty flowers. All the pretty birds and bugs are sleeping. But then Spring comes, and all the colors come back out. The grass grows, and the tress have leaves again. The butterflies, bugs and birds are outside again. So we take the white boring eggs, and make them colorful like Spring.

She really enjoyed doing the eggs this year. This year, we just used store bought dye. Next year, we are planning on using natural dye.