Sensory Bottles: shake rattle and roll

R decided to make her own set of shaker bottles and raided the kitchen to make these three amongst others. Each makes a different kind of noise due to the different sizes of the "filling" and R and A enjoyed ranking them from highest to lowest (I am sure more will follow in the same vein), B just enjoyed making as much noise as possible running round with one in each hand and shouting "Noisy!" at the top of his voice. Lots of fun but don't forget to pass the ear plugs!

Sensory Bottles: Discovery Bottle

Gather together any toys or charms that are small enough to fit into your chosen bottle and hide them inside something like rice or sand. This one kept B occupied longer than any of the others so far (whereas the older kids like the other bottles better). He was particularly interested in the figure of a snowman which we hid in there and kept saying "Man in rice" and shaking it about until he found it again.
We have just started off with a general assortment of objects but you could do all things to fit a theme; for example all beginning with the same letter, or a set number of things or the same colour or all the same kind of object (e.g. all dinosaurs).
You could have a list of objects to find and check off (either words or pictures for pre-readers)or have them write a list of all the things they find (have a round number so you know when they have got them all).
We didn't seal the lid on this one (hope I don't regret that :) ) as I want to be able to vary it by changing the objects from time to time.

Sensory Bottles: Static Electricity Bottle

Remember the old party trick where you get someones hair to stand up on their head by rubbing it with a balloon? This bottle works in the same way.
Take a totally clean and dry bottle (we dried our on the radiator just to make sure). Fill with a few shreds of tissue paper, or polystyrene balls. Charge up by rubbing (hard!) on the carpet, or your jumper or hair.

Sensory Bottles: Bubble Bottle

In preparation for the letter B this week here is another bottle. Easiest of the lot. Fill one third full of water and add a squirt of washing up liquid (dish soap). The more space you leave the more bubbles you can make, but the more bubbles you make the smaller each bubble will be ;)

Sensory Bottles: Slow Motion Bottle

The idea behind this bottle is to have a thick liquid through which your chosen objects of interest fall slowly. The other examples I have found of this use corn syrup but the thought of the mess if the bottle broke put me off! Instead I used a cheap shampoo and some star spangles. Unfortunately the shampoo was not very transparent so whilst it worked OK it was not ideal. Next trial was with the clear shower gel and silver glitter as well as star spangles - perfect!
Of course I could recycle the bottle with the shampoo to make another bottle but first I have to get it off my 6 year old who keeps having races to see which is faster. Kept him occupied for ages. Result! Another thing to try is rolling them, weird things happen due to inertia (sorry my secondary school science teacher roots are showing!).

Sensory Bottles: Wave Bottle

As a third child my youngest son tends to get the short end of the stick. With an older brother and sister he tends to get toys that are second or third hand and it is a struggle to get him things that are just his and not immediately stolen by his older siblings. Of course money too plays its part. Although I may have the will to get him a new toy just for him I usually have something similar already and of course no matter how babyish the toy is as soon as I liberate it from the back of the cupboard for my 2 year old it is immediately grabbed by older sister (8) or brother (6) with cries of "I remember this!" and cue the 2 year olds temper tantrum.
This is the start of resources that are produced for B first to redress this balance. It is the kind of thing used by daycare for their "sensory table" and since we are in Germany and don't have access to an English-speaking parent and toddler group at the moment (I am ashamed to say my German is woeful) he hasn't had much opportunity to experience this kind of thing outside the home either. This is not to say that he doesn't get to play with sensory toys like sand and water but anything else tends to be a bit ad hoc. Bottles like these can be made cheaply and stored away and got out to play with like any other toy.
This first one is the easiest - water coloured with food colouring and baby oil with the top hot-glued on. If you want to give it a fancy name you can call it your "wave bottle" or "ocean bottle".

Others will follow as an when they become available (I'm planning to use the bottles from the little bottles of juice that go in the older kids lunches for school and the "table clearers" tend to be a little over enthusiastic about collecting recyclables!).
Of course the best laid plans can go wrong. When I came to take the photo where did I have to liberate it from? DD's bedroom of course!