DIY Smell & Shake Discovery Bottles for Babies & Kids

I made these DIY Scented Sensory Bottles when Dimples was younger, they were a definite hit. He still has the Coffee Bean one and it still smells so good. I decided to do a new and improved batch of scented discovery bottles for Miss Cherub.

Dimples was a great helper, he came up with some ideas while he made these for his baby sister.
First we gather our materials, we tried to stick to a theme of a colour. Because these are scented the materials need to be able to hold and soak up the essence and essential oil.

• Dimples designed a Eucalyptus one using, blue and white pom-poms, some blue knitted wool daisies, some blue pipe cleaners and some metal bells. We added eucalyptus oil in. It smells and sounds great.
• The Lavender one had some real lavender flowers in it, lavender incense oil dyed rice from our Lavender Zen Rice garden & a little butterfly.
• The Rocking Rosemary had fresh rosemary from our backyard and some dried herb rosemary from our spice rack. Simple!
• The Christmas one had Peppermint scented red & green Rice from our Christmas Rice Sensory Tub, some sequins and a plastic candy cane.
• We still have the plastic Dinosaur in coffee beans &
• The old Lavender one that had silk purple flowers and lavender rice.  

All you need to make these are some old baby Bottles, stocking, a hot glue gun and your materials.
Take the teat out of your bottle so your left with a hole, put all your materials in the discovery bottle and the essence or essential oil, and hot glue gun a piece of stocking tight over the lid, then hot glue gun a circle over this and screw your lid on tight. Done!

They smell so sweet.

Miss Cherub loves sniffing them, shaking them and transferring them from hand to hand listening to the sounds they make.

Dimples plays I-spy with me and while he had a cold the past week he slept with his eucalyptus one by his pillow.

The Christmas themed one looks so festive at this time of year and has been placed up with the Christmas ornaments.

These are a really handy DIY toy that uses all the sense; smell, shake & listen to them, rattle & bang them around, look and see what you can spot. Considering the coffee bean one still smells years later I think this set will be rotated around frequently with the Christmas one getting packed away with our Christmas decorations until next year.

Learning concepts:

Colour coordination

Learning with the senses;

Defining between different scents

Listening to different sounds

Search & find, I-spy games

Baby grasp, transferring between hands.

Happy Adventures :)

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Christmas Scented Sensory Rice Play

Our first Christmas Spirit Play experience this season is a Peppermint Scented Red & Green Rice Tactile tub.  I dyed a heap of rice with red & green colouring, then as it dried I added Peppermint essence to give it a christmassy smell. It was divine!

Once ready I put in a bag of Christmas themed sequins and glitter, plastic candy canes, some Christmas decorations and Christmas tree baubles. Dimples contrasted the red and the green baubles with the red and green rice. I had taken the ends off the bauble and Dimples started putting grains of rice into them. The hole was tiny so this was a great fine motor task for him & to add to the sensory delight, he found that if he shook them they made a musical ding.

Eventually he mixed the colours around, enjoyed some pretend play with the reindeer & elf figures, they made tracks, the elf rode the reindeer around and then they tripped over the decorations and got buried. Dimples commented on how yummy the rice smelt.



There was a stray bauble that ended up smashed on the ground, they are plastic so I think Dimples had something to do with it 'smashing' he used this cue and filled the open bauble up to plant candy canes in it.

The tactile tub was a great sensory experience with the contrasting colours that were visually appealing, the sound of the rice pouring and flicking around, along with the scent but it also provided a goo imaginary Christmas scene. After a while Dimples decided to fence in the reindeer so they could escape. He very carefully piled up rice and made a rail out of baubles and plastic candy canes.

 

After a while when he started to lack interest I added some more elements. Funnels and large plastic kids tweezers.  He did his usually pouring and experimented with the different funnels then very cleverly used the large tweezers to grab the large Christmas sequins. More fine motor practice and sorting through the rice to find the same sort of sequins. this was time consuming and required lots of focused attention.

Have you played with scented Rice before?

What Scent have you used?

Here are some of our previous posts using rice. They're always a hit! 

Coloured Rice Construction Bin

Lavender Dyed Zen Rice Garden

Rainbow Rice Play

Learning Concepts:
Sensory Play
Tactile experiences
Imaginary & pretend play
Exploring Christmas Theme
Fine Motor skills
Sorting

Ideas for Extending:
Make a funnel tree like our split pea funnel tree
Early Measurement principles
Use small figurines to make it a small world
Use sand equipment, like a sand mill to pour rice in

Happy Adventures

Magic Elf Adventures - Take 2



Dimples woke one morning to see Buddy swinging on a candy can swing from the ceiling fan.

Another night Buddy left Dimples some Magical Snow Powder (desicated coconut, glitter and sprinkles) and some magical beans, there was a note telling him to plant the seeds in the magical snow powder and water them before bed.
They grew the next morning into Christmas Lollipops. Magic!!




Lots of Mischief: Buddy made a sled for the reindeer and had been pushing toilet paper down the stairs.
Then it looked like he had been watching Christmas Movies all night & eating popcorn.
He decorated the tree with toilet paper and was found in the tree
What a messy elf!

Dimples woke one morning to find a recipe pinned in the kitchen, lots of ingredients and cooking mess on the bench
Buddy wanted some ginger bread cookies by the looks of things so Dimples the Mini Master Chef got cooking
Here is the Post & Our recipe: Child Led Baking & Decorating

The door way Trap. Through the night Buddy wrapped up Dimples Door way with Christmas paper to trap him in.
Magic Elf's get bored when they are not with their friends.
Our Elf has made a friend, and decided to wrap him up as well.

Sick Night: Poor Buddy came down with the flu and took up rest in the tissue box.

Buddy made a camp out fort through the night & left Dimples a special treat.
Christmas is 3 sleeps away so he left some Reindeer sparkle Dust

Happy Elf Adventures

If you missed our first Elf Adventures Post click HERE to see the fun.
and I hope you have a great Christmas.

The Melted Snow Man - Christmas Sensory Play



Cold Squishy Melted Snow for some Messy Sensory Play before Christmas arrives.



The snowman that Dimples Magic Elf Buddy bought back had Melted by the morning.

I grabbed some of this fake snow from the bargain shop. It is the same sort of thing that water beads are made from, it expands to hold 100 times it weight when added to water.
It is pretty cool stuff. Dimples Magic Elf left him a bowl of it to play with one morning along with a melted snow man.
The fake snow is squishy, slimy, shivery cold, has a wet texture but isn't really messy all the things we love about sensory play. I added some glitter and small star sequins to give it a Christmas vibe.

Plastic Candy Cane, Christmas Baubles, Glitter, Fake Snow and a Gold star gave the sensory bowl a real Christmas feel.  There were a few cups for Dimples to scoop around with and the snow mans essentials; buttons, a nose, bead eyes and pipe cleaner arms.

Invitation to Play

 

 It wasn't long before Dimples imagination led him to mix up some pretend Snow drinks.
They looked beautiful and sparkly, like Christmas Slushy Cocktails.
He made a few batches, bringing them to me to "taste"
He mixed in some more glitter and used the candy canes as stirrers.

The star worked well in the snowy sludge. Dimples explored it and scooped the snow up, pouring it over the top so he could watch the snow ooze through. Snowy large chunks would get stuck so he gently tapped it. He enjoyed making melted Snow men in the cups and then pouring them over the star

If you want to see our Magic Elf Adventures check him out HERE

Merry Christmas

Elf on the Shelf Adventures

Buddy 2012 - Our Elf on the Shelf arrived at the door in his box along with the book.
It wasn't long before he had set up watch on the Reindeer.
and then came the mischief

 

Buddy played with Dimples cars all night by the looks of things.
He left a little note thanking Dimples for letting him use his cars

Buddy also drew funny faces over Mum & Dad. Giving them red noses.
Dimples thought this was hilarious and grabbed his little camera to take some pictures of his naughty Elf.



Buddy called a Christmas meeting through the night with Fellow Christmas figures around their own tree.
There is little Elf foot prints coming from the fire place, he must of made these when he returned from visiting Santa.
 Buddy is sitting on the table with a Christmas count down

Dimples was definitely excited that he had a magical Elf visiting until Christmas.

One night Buddy decorated a Santa cookie and turned our Milk Green.
He made quite a mess and had crumbs over his face
but he was nice enough to leave a fresh cookie and some icing so Dimples could decorate one to

Buddy left Dimples some craft, a collage of a tree.
You must have used every one of the scissors.

Whoops Buddy forgot to shut the fire Place door again when he returned from reporting to Santa that night.

Buddy the Elf likes Green.
He raided the drawing box one night and found all the green texters.
He drew some Christmas pictures from Dimples

ZOO. Dimples awoke to find that his table had been turned into an Animal cage.
Buddy had used all the sticky tape to contain Dimples stuffed toys.
There was a do not touch sign on the sticky tape so buddy had electrified it to contain the animals through the night.

And he had drawn a picture of them

 

Dimples woke up one morning to see Buddy fishing in the fish tank.

He had been drawing fish and looking up Rex Hunt by the looks of things and then decided to go for a fish himself.

Dimples was extra good one day so Buddy left him a special treat...
Fake Snow Sensory Play.
He had bought Dimples back a snow man from the north pole but he melted through the night.
To see the POST on this Activity click HERE



Buddy found a Elf friend and has enrolled him into the mischief making.
Here he is having a ride on the reindeer.
This was a beautiful handmade gift from a fellow Australian Kid Blogger Network Member.
 

Stay tuned for Elf Adventures 2:  Click here to see the fun

 

Raised Foil Prints for Christmas

Hello Lovely blog readers.  I hope you're all getting in to the Christmas Spirit.

I am very organised this year, which is extremely unusual for me, I am loving the feeling.

Dimples created some Raised Foil Prints for Christmas gifts this week.  Here they are:

 

 

Since most of the Christmas shopping has been done, wrapped and is ready under the tree (I know! Fancy that!)  these are some extra bonuses that are a gorgeous, very special label for some special peoples gifts.  They make the gifts look unique and wrapped with love or would like great as a DIY Card.

They're really simple to make. We havent used foil as a material before and it was so easy to work with.  The Raised foil Prints are made from cardboard base, with tacky dried glue pictures. I used a tacky clear craft glue to drizzle on the pictures and sat them up to dry.

Once the glue prints were dry I covered them with a small, thin layer of glue (not enough to dry bumpy) and covered them with Foil. Using a paper towel on top, I pressed down and rubbed the print so that the foil stuck down around the raised glue prints. It worked well.

Dimples had fun painting them. He did some red and green to match our Christmas theme and then sprinkled glitter over them. With the paint over them, the raised glue print isn't as noticeable, so as they dried I used the paper towel again to softly rub over the raised foil only, taking some of the excess paint off so the silver can shine through.  Then I stuck the final creation on some coloured paper, punched a hole, decorated with ribbon and tinsle and Dimples picked which gifts to add them to. We wrote a special message on the back of them.

I love the way they turned out.  They are beautiful and such a thoughtful gift topper. They were also a new and fun way for us to be creative with our Christmas Decorating and wrapping.

Happy Christmas Adventures