Transport Sensory Bottle

Sensory bottles are simply a container that is filled with various materials to encourage non-messy sensory play. If your havea toddler who adores all things to do with transport create a Transport Sensory Bottle for them.

Their purpose is to enable children to use their senses to explore the bottle. A child can shake, roll, turn and observe how objects in the bottle move around. Calm down sensory  bottles help little ones soothe themselves, take deep breaths and work through their emotions.

How to Make Transport Sensory Bottle

Supplies you will need:

• plastic bottle
• neon transport beads
• clear handwash (possible replacement – corn syrup)
• baby oil
• glue and tape
• optional: nail varnish and cotton balls

Preparing sensory bottle

I took a 500ml plastic bottle and removed its label. Nail varnish remover helps with this process and removes the label glue quickly.

Making a transport calm down sensory bottle

We have a variety of transport beads which we usually use for threading. The neon transport beads include brightly colored planes, boats, trains and old fashioned cars.

I popped several of the transport beads into the bottom of the plastic bottle.

Next I poured 250ml of clear handwash into the plastic bottle. I chose handwash because the liquid was clear yet thick. This could be substituted with corn syrup.

My son enjoyed looking at the bottle even though it wasn’t finished as the transport beads looked so bright in the liquid.

On top of the handwash, I added approximately 50ml of baby oil to the bottle. I was interested to see how the two clear liquids would mix together.

I then poured in some more clear handwash until the plastic bottle was full.

To complete the calm down sensory bottle, I added super glue around the rim of the lid, secured the lid onto the bottle and wrapped blue electrical tape around the lid to ensure that the bottle could not be opened.

Let’s play!

My son thoroughly enjoyed shaking the sensory bottle and watching the two liquids combine. He noticed the bubbles moving up the bottle and attempted to follow the bubbles with his fingers.

We talked about the different modes of transport we could see and their colors.

Together we watched as the transport beads slowly moved back to the bottom of the bottle.

It was surprising how calm my son was as the beads moved down. He became mesmerized by the beads and waited until each and every transport bead was at the bottom.

Our transport calm down sensory bottle could be used as a time out timer, an activity timer or a calm down tool.

WHAT TO TRY NEXT?

• Learn more about visual sensory processing.
• Go on backyard scavenger hunt!
• Make a galaxy I-spy sensory bottle.
• Observe light and shadow play with reflections sensory bin

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