Easy DIY Mini Sensory Bottles for Engaging Kids
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Sensory bottles are fantastic tools for helping kids regulate their emotions. They offer a visual and sensory experience that can help calm, soothe, and refocus a child who may be feeling anxious or overstimulated. Check out these Easy DIY Mini Sensory Bottles for Engaging Kids.
Benefits of Sensory Bottles
Sensory bottles or discovery bottles are a great tool for kids of any age to play with glitter or small objects like pom poms or different shapes and gain sensory input. Simple sensory bottles are make with different materials in clear plastic bottles that keep for a long time and give kids a lot of hours of play.
Sensory bottles are an excellent way to engage children of all ages in sensory play. These DIY Mini Sensory Bottles can provide hours of entertainment and sensory stimulation.
Emotional Regulation: Sensory bottles can help calm children during moments of anxiety or frustration. Watching the movement of glitter or other items can have a soothing effect.
Focus and Attention: For children who struggle with concentration, sensory bottles can help them focus by providing a quiet, visual sensory activity.
Visual Stimulation: They offer a great way to engage children’s visual senses. The swirling objects, glitter, and colors can capture a child’s attention and help ground them.
Fine Motor Skills: Shaking or manipulating the bottle strengthens fine motor skills, especially when children try to tip or roll the bottle to move the items inside.
Portable and Safe: Sensory bottles are portable, mess-free, and easy to use anywhere, making them a practical calming tool for travel, home, or the classroom.
Check out these magnetic sensory bottles for lots of fun as well.
We used mini-sized bottles to make a set of mini-sensory bottles that you can take when you travel. In the car, on an airplane, in a restaurant, they provide all the benefits in a compact package.
Clear glue or baby oil can be used as a base to slow the movement of the water beads, glitter, or small parts inside the bottle. Mineral oil or corn syrup can also be added to change the density of the liquid, altering how the items inside move.
The addition of warm water, mixed with a bit of dish soap or food coloring, provides a fun way to engage kids in the process, allowing them to watch how the materials react and move in the water.
Many parents and educators find that sensory bottles are a great tool for calming down younger children, while also providing sensory stimulation for older kids. These bottles are often used as calm-down jars, helping children focus when they’re feeling anxious or overstimulated. By sealing the cap with hot glue, you can ensure that the sensory toy remains secure, even with vigorous shaking or movement.
These sensory bottles are also a great way to repurpose materials from the dollar store or craft store, keeping costs low while providing endless fun. Some parents even use clear hair gel or baby oil to create different textures inside the bottles, giving children a variety of sensory experiences in one activity. Weighted bottles, made by adding white pellets or sand, can also offer additional sensory stimulation for younger children.
Sensory Activities for Toddlers
There are so many great ways to stimulate children’s senses and help them regulate emotions and build brain connections that make future learning happen.
Kenetic Sand: This sensory sand is a great tool to help your child experience the sense of touch over and over again. Toss in some construction toys or cars to drive through it and you have a play station that will entertain them for a good while.
Water Play: Provide a shallow container with water, sponges, cups, and toys for splashing and pouring. This helps develop fine motor skills and sensory exploration.
Sensory Playdough: Add items like rice, sand, or beads into playdough to give it texture. Use scents and colors to give it visual and smell sensations. Toddlers can knead and squeeze it, engaging their senses.
Sensory Squish Bags: Add gel and items to ziplock bags for kids to manipulate in different ways.
Sound Exploration: Fill different containers with various items (beans, rice, coins) to create homemade instruments. Let toddlers shake them and explore the different sounds.
Cloud Dough: Super soft dough kids can mold and shape with their hands.
Feely Boxes: Fill a box with items of different textures (soft cloth, sponge, cotton balls, sandpaper). Have toddlers reach in and guess what they’re touching.
Bubble Wrap Stomping: Place bubble wrap on the floor and let toddlers walk or stomp on it, listening for the popping sound while exploring the texture under their feet.
Sensory Garden: There is nothing that gives kids more sensory stimulation than the garden! There are so many sights, sounds, textures, smells, and tastes in the garden making it the perfect teacher and place to explore.
How to Make Mini Sensory Bottles
These DIY Mini Sensory Bottles are easy to make yourself and you might already have everything you need on hand!
Easy DIY Mini Sensory Bottles
Ingredients
- 5 80 mL (2.7 oz / ⅓ C) plastic bottle with tight-fitting lids
- Water
- Clear school glue or baby oil clear glue recommended
- Small funnel
- Rainbow rice see below for instructions on how to make it
- Pink rice
- Multicolored gems/jewels
- Glitter
- Sequins
- Pink felt flamingos
Instructions
- Gather all the supplies needed.
- Use a funnel to pour the rainbow rice into the sensory bottle, seal the lid tightly, and set it aside.
- Use the funnel to add pink rice and flamingos into the sensory bottle, seal the lid tightly, and set it aside.
- Add water to the third sensory bottle, filling ¾ of the way. Pour in multicolored gems or jewels using the funnel. Fill the remainder of the bottle with clear glue or baby oil. Seal the lid tightly. Shake the bottle to disperse the gems throughout the water/glue mixture, and set it aside.
- Add water to the fourth sensory bottle, filling ¾ of the way. Pour in the glitter. Fill the remainder of the bottle with clear glue. Seal the lid tightly. Shake the bottle to disperse the glitter throughout the water/glue mixture, then set it aside.
- Add water to the fifth sensory bottle, filling ¾ of the way. Pour in the sequins. Fill the remainder of the bottle with clear glue. Seal the lid tightly. Shake the bottle to disperse the sequins throughout the water/glue mixture, then set it aside.
Notes
Seal the bag and gently mix the paint and rice until it’s completely covered. Repeat this process
until all the colors of the rainbow are created. Carefully pour the painted rice onto a wax
paper-lined cooking sheet to let dry for 2-3 hours or overnight. Use the same process for the
pink rice.
*Clear glue is recommended over baby oil for a more fluid-moving sensory bottle.
For more sensory bottle ideas, check these out:
