Sensory Bottles

With any shape or size clear plastic bottle or container you can make a sensory toy for your young children.  These bottles contain beads, sequins, confetti, glitter, bells, and pom poms, but you can use anything that will fit.  The blue liquid bottle (top left) contains corn syrup, blue tempera paint, and silver glitter.  Isn’t it pretty close up?

Another cool bottle that doesn’t look like much but is very pretty “in real life”, has several colors of paint dripped in and shaken around to spread the colors.  If you make one like this, be sparing with the paint at first, as it is easy to get too much paint or to shake it so much that you end up with a yucky brown.  This bottle purposely has some clear areas–just because it looks neat that way, but you can do it however you like.

Here is a closer view:

Sensory bottles are a great way to let your little ones explore objects-especially small objects, without actually getting them into their little hands–or more importantly their little mouths!

Note:  All bottles shown were made by my co-worker Emily Wolfenbarger.  Thanks for letting me share them, Emily!