Create an exciting ocean themed discovery bottle which creates waves and bubbles when tipped from side to side! Lots of crafty, scientific, sensory fun for beach themed summer play-time for kids and great entertainment for long car journeys too!
We have been making some new discovery bottles recently after drinking lots of juice from some enormous plastic bottles which lend themselves to these sorts of activities! We have an under the sea summer theme coming up so we started off by making an ocean bottle with waves and bubbles to look at!
First they poured in a bottle of baby oil (approx 200ml) and then dropped a lovely variety of shells and pebbles through the neck of the bottle. We stirred a very small amount of blue gel food colouring into some water (we use these Wilton Icing Gel Colours
for all play recipes), stirred it through to make sure it was very light blue, and added a little more to dilute it until it was just right. Then they tipped it on top of the oil and watched what happened to the two liquids when they met each other!
[NB: The lid should be sealed securely shut with strong glue or a glue gun.]
They noticed straight away that they didn’t mix together and could see the clear oil sitting on top of the blue water below. We talked about why that happened then tried tipping the bottle from side to side to make some waves and large bubbles. When air is trapped in the oil it creates bubbles which last for longer than those in water, and it is fun to watch them moving slowly until they pop.
The little sea creatures and sea shells were fun for looking at closely and using as prompts to create stories for imaginative play together.
This bottle, along with some others we have created, will be great additions on our very long car journeys coming up this summer as we travel! Nicely self-contained, but still wonderfully engaging and a great sensory, scientific and imaginative play tool.
What they are learning as they play:
science: understanding that oil and water do not mix, looking at bubbles form and pop, understanding how air can be trapped in liquids, talking about the shape and nature of waves, naming and describing sea creatures and shells, talking about habitats
sensory: visual stimulus, exploring water and oil, watching colours mix and separate
creativity: inventing stories using toys and props from imagination
Cakie: 4.10
Pop: 3. 3
Bean: 16 mos
See our Baby Discovery Bottles here!
Browse our other seaside crafts and activities here.
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