Scented Sensory Discovery Bottles

How to Make & Play with Scented Sensory Discovery Bottles.

These are awesome if I may say so my self! 
I often find myself sniffing away at one of them as Dimples plays quietly.
Lately we have been experimenting with smells, different smelling flowers and plants, making the best sensory-cinnamon-playdoh that is still smelling great and getting used.

Dimples first smelt the perfume one & stuck his nose right in, taking a huge whiff! It was quiet funny to see his face & i got it on camera too. It didn't deter him though, he kept going back for more & insisted on taking them to show family & friends to see their facial reactions.

This activity was great to do and the scent bottles are still laying around getting smelled-

What you would need to make them:  Baby bottles without the teats with screw on lids, stocking/pantyhose, your contents (coffee beans, essential oils, small objects, fake flowers, material leaves, pretend flower petals, coloured rice or what ever tickles your fancy).

Im sure you have heard of discovery bottles before?  You can use them for anything & everything, but this is the first time I have tried scented ones.
Discovery bottles are great for developing attention span and they have a relaxing quality to them!
Use your imagination -
All you need to do is have your little one get in & help, use a funnel and let them pour in the ingredients, then pop in the small objects. We all know toddlers and preschoolers love shoving small objects into things, you know...... in ears, noses, pockets, nappies, lounge cushions.  Put all your things is & a few drops of essential oil or whatever scent you are using.
Then place your stocking over the top of the bottle & screw the lid on tight. You could go one step further if you intend to leave them for free play & use a glue gun to stick the stocking & the lid on!
The scent comes up through the stocking BUT they are also great for exploration and making sound, twisting turning & shaking them around to move the objects out into sight.  Also great for igniting all your senses, and sharing them with others to see what their reaction will be.  Dimples had great fun with them.

Here's what we did;
Dinosaur Coffee Beans-
One of the favourites, I don't even drink that much coffee but the smell of coffee beans is addictive.
This simple one has coffee beans, a small toy dinosaur, and some small tufts of pretend grass that we found in Dimples toy soldier box.

Eucalyptus Snake-
Another favourite, this one has material leaves, a plastic snake, some green dyed rice, and eucalyptus oil with a drop of tea tree & lemon oil.
I think this one would be a good one to make up if Dimples got a cold. It smells great!

Lavender dragonfly-
Fake Lavender flowers & petals. I got a bunch of these at the bargain shop for $1, the leaves got used in the previous one & the petals in this one. Add some Purple dyed rice and a plastic dragonfly (of a contrasting colour) with a few drops of Lavender oil.

Garlic Eye Ball-
Garlic cloves some skinned & squashed,  some still whole, a couple of white material petals, & a creepy eyeball.

Pretties in Perfume-

Using some old jewelry, rice, fake flower petals and perfume.

Easy & very smelly.

What you should do when encouraging your child to play with them is set an example by smelling them, pull some weird funny facials and have a laugh together, then teach them how to move them around to get the objects to position the way you want, twist, turn, gently rattle & shake.

You can also play by smell only. Have your child blindfolded and ask them to identify the smells, purely by smell. This is also great for labelling things and exploring them, for instance Lavender is purple, it is a flower, it is used in cleaning products and in sprays, it helps you relax and is good for sleep.  Eucalyptus, is great for when your sick to help unblock stuffy noses, it grows on trees, koalas like to eat it and so on.

Pirate Party Part 3 - The cake & food ideas

Pirate Theme Party for Dimples 3rd Birthday - The Treasure Chest Cake, the food ideas & inspiration.

The Treasure Chest Cake-

The Cake was a Chocolate swirl Cake that I made the night before the Party.  A Treasure Chest Cake!

This where I got the inspiration from Treasure Chest Cake recipe . With a little of my own twist of course. I used a cake board from Spotlight as the base, brown sugar as the sand with some real shells, and a smaller cake board as the base of the lid.

First I made the rectangle cake & sliced the rounded top off, it fit perfectly on top of the lid cake board. That was the first part done easily, a layer of frosting on the board (as glue) to stick on the cake, and then the cake top got covered with frosting. I used licorice as 2 straps over the top & wrote Happy Birthday over the lid then put it to the side while I did the tricky bit. I frosted the bottom of the treasure chest around all the sides and a border around the inside.

The Treasure consisted of gold chocolate coins, small jelly belly jelly beans, baby M&M's, some scull Candy's in bright colours, some candy bracelets and a few lolly rings. Lots of sugar & bright colours.

Then using writing icing I put on a key hole at the front & some more straps from licorice.
The hardest part was the balancing act- Using some skews and tooth picks I placed the lid on top. If you are attempting this my advice is to leave your cake refrigerated over night in separate pieces so that it sets and is harder, it wont work if you have a soft warm cake, then set & balance it right before serving it.

Dimples just wanted to take all the ring lolly pops from the treasure.

Food-
I printed up some black, red and white labels and thought up some Pirate theme names to re-name everything.  Everything seems more interesting when it is renamed into Pirate Jargon.

Shark Jewels fruit salad.
Served in a shark head watermelon with blueberries, grapes and watermelon balls to resemble jewels.

Candy Bar
Pirates teeth; baby marshmellows, caramel popcorn.
Cannon Balls; Maltesser chocolates and red jaffer chocolates.
Sharks Bait; Sour worms and snakes.

NOW, just a quick warning. I didn't take many set photos of the lay out and food although i wish i had have programmed my brain to do this. But after the party had started my blogging senses just flew out the window and then after looking back at pictures, I thought to myself  'why don't I have any pictures of the themed food". I had put a lot of time and effort finding themed food to serve and then, nothing!  So another word of advice to an party throwers, take a photo of everything before its party time & little hands scramble all over the place.

Anyway, I can only explain what my ideas were and show you my inspiration. Here goes,

Ships lost at sea;
These were blue jelly, layered with whipped cream to represent the rough ocean inspired by these and these neat boats  on top were orange slices made of jelly with pirate flags to represent boats (like these stripy-jelly-orange-wedges- )

We had "Sea Water" & "Pirates Punch" in jugs, as well as a blow up Pirate boat full of toddler pops and soda for the adults.

Octopus Dip-
Using the top off a Capsicum stuck in dip, I cut out Octopus eyes and 8 legs, the dip was centred in the middle of the plate and surrounding it was sliced carrot, celery, gherkins, cucumber and crackers.
Inspired by octopus-dip-recipe

Squid-
Little Frankfurt's sliced with "squid" legs, served with tomato sauce to dip in.
like the ones shown here on squidoo.com

Sail away sandwich's-
Shaped from a Pirate boat cookie cutter we had sandwich's
Devon & sauce,
ham & cheese
chicken, cheese & mayo
Vegemite.

Pirates Grub-
On top of this I cooked up some Sea shanties, some curly fries and some calamari rings.

Pirate Party Games - Part 2

Pirate Party for 3 year Old Dimples; Part 2, Games & Dress ups.

Ever Fancied throwing a Pirate party for your child? Well heres how we done it. See my previous past on the decorations & Invitations, this post is on the games, play and dress ups but keep tuned for the most important post. The Treasure chest Cake & the themed food.

Dont forget to follow this blog & like us on facebook to keep up to date with our fun adventures.

Red & Black Sensory boxes-

This was a hit, the kids called the red ones berries & the black ones caviar, they enjoyed filling up buckets of them, squishing them and feeling them, they got their feet in them and had lots of fun. Even some of the grown ups thought they were odd & couldn't resist the urge to touch them

\

A real Pirate Boat for Pretend Play-

With a cross sail and a bit of Red material I snagged at the Salvation army, this Pirate ship is ready to sail the ocean blue. Come and Join the Pirate Crew!

Off the side was the start of the planks to walk, a slide at the front and a decorated Pirate flag.

See Pirate Party Post Part 1 before this for decoration ideas.

The Pirates Tree House-

Myself and Adventures Dad have been making this for dimples for a few weeks prior to his party but we altered it and made it more "piratey" and made sure it was complete and ready for his crew to play on. It was a hit and still is. I will be doing an individual post on the finish product as it is a easy tree house made from reused or free materials and Dimples absolutely loves it, I don't think the novelty will ever run out.  So here is the quick Game view of the Pirates House: Complete with fish net, a steering wheel, a pirates flag, a telescope, ladders and split level around the tree.  The rope extended over the centre of Dimples trampoline and the kids had a ball hanging on to it as they jumped!

 



Ring toss-

In the weeks leading up to the pirate party we made Dimples a outdoor ring toss game on an old scrap of wood, I got adventures Dad to nail gun it to a star picket pole and put it in the yard with long screws here and there for the rings to go on. Then Dimples helped me paint it. We did a large Island surrounded by blue ocean, added some real sand over the island as the paint was still wet and then did some palms, a treasure box, a pirate ship. a shark and a octopus. The screws weren't long enough for the coits so we cut some hose & added them on as an extension. Of course the treasure was 10 points and the rest varied down to 1 point.

Walk the Plank over a shark Pool full of slime-

We put some beams across the yard on square crate as the planks and then a smaller wooden one in the middle saying "walk the plank" underneath this was a kid pool with sharks and ocean creatures in slime. It was just a packet of gelli baff slush! But the kids loved it, the first as little Miss K and at first she looked down and hesitated for a minute, it was cute.

It also doubled as a seat for all the crew.

Buried treasure-

I got some beads and some dress up necklaces, some plastic pirate coins, and I went through my jewellery box. I still have all more junk jewellery stuff from when i was a teenager, you know! You get a huge collection of $2 stuff that's in fashion at the time as a teenager, none of it worth anything and none of it to be worn again so there was real treasure in there as well as soon blue lucky stones that we often use in our sensory boxes --------> Look through the sensory button on the side bar for some ideas.

There were 6 plastic buckets all full of sand and buried treasure, along with a few treasure boxes that the children filled up and carried around, they took them on the boot, along the plank and into the tree house.

There were bikes, the quad, scooters, a lawn mower, Bubbles, Baloons & swings to play with as well.

Dress up Theme-

Everyone, even the "big kids" had to dress up, everyone got right into it with great spirit & fun attitudes. Everyone enjoyed seeing the little ones dress up and it added to the element of pretend play, imagination & their Pirate games.

Here are some of the Pirate crew

Its a shame the streamer blew over in this picture because Pirate J was wearing a stick on Pirate goatee and wouldn't let me get another picture :P