Have to admit that I wanted to make a calm down bottle for my toddler ever since I saw them for the first time! However, I wasn’t really sure about giving her a bottle with liquid content, especially plastic bottle! So, I came up with an idea about glow-in-the-dark sensory bottle without any liquid materials!
Babies and toddlers have a habit of throwing things around and my child is no different! And I wasn’t sure what would happen if she throws the plastic bottle on the floor and it cracks!
Messy is not a problem, but soaked carpets might be, especially if there is glitter or some kind of gel inside the bottle. For this reason, I decided to create no-liquids calm down sensory bottle with glow-in-the-dark effect she can carry with her to bed along with her torch.
How to Make Glow-in-the-Dark Sensory Bottle?
List of supplies needed to make glow-in-the-dark calm down bottle:
- small plastic bottle
- neon plastic straws
- cotton balls
- scissors
- LED flashlight
Things I placed inside a bottle are very basic – few neon plastic straws I had on hand, left over from some past party, and cotton balls. I have placed all of this in a small blue plastic bottle. I picked blue bottle because it reminds me of the sky.
One little tip if you’re cutting straws for this sensory bottle: place straws in the bottle as much as needed to be cut and then snap with scissors while holding them. This will prevent pieces of straws to jump all over the room! (I had that too!)
Oh, did I mention why I decided to place cotton balls? No? I added cotton balls because this was supposed to be a calm down bottle and I used cotton balls to silence any sound pieces of drinking straws would make bumping into bottle walls during shaking.
Using Glow-in-the-Dark Sensory Bottle
My tot has her little hand-held torch with LED light and she was so fascinated with all the glowing that came from the bottle! I have placed inside only pink and purple straws since we are having Valentine’s day soon plus, I thought it would make a good contrast with a blue bottle.
After the night fell, she picked up the flashlight and her new toy. It was fun for her how straws kept glowing when there was light and how everything was dark when she turned off the light.
She experimented with light angle and tried to see what will happen with the glow if she points the flashlight into different direction.
This glow-in-the-dark sensory bottle is perfect calming activity for babies and toddlers to wind down after a busy day.
Change this sensory bottle – observe stars!
If you replace neon drinking stars with glow-in-the-dark stars, your toddler can observe glowing stars inside this calm down bottle. Of course, flashlight is still an important part because kids simply adore playing with the light!
What to Do Next?
- Pick our free Sensory Play e-book and learn more about benefits of sensory play for your child!
- Learn about visual sensory system.
- Make a galaxy I-spy bottle for your toddler.
Thanks for the idea with this. Mine loooooves the glitter bottles but I’m like you, that I’m so nervous that it will end in a carpet full of glitter and goop. I’ve been trying to come up with other things that would be fun in it without liquid. I like the straws idea!