Sensory magnet bottles

We recently visited Temple ISD's "Excellence in Education" vendor fair and received a lot of questions about or Sensory/Magnet bottles. Our homemade bottles were a hit at our summer pop-ups as well with all ages!

Below you can find instructions on how to create your own at home.

We used this blog post as a guide to create our bottles. 

Materials needed: 

• Plastic Water bottle (we used Voss plastic water bottles. These can be found locally at CVS in the refrigerated section)
• Baby Oil (to buy in bulk check Amazon or Sam's
• Rice + Food Coloring to dye it (to dye your rice follow the instructions here)
• Colorful objects (water beads, loom rubber bands, glitter, etc.)
• Metal Pieces (paper clips, washers, etc.)
• Gorilla or Super Glue
• Magnets (we used these from Amazon)

Instructions: 

• Fill bottle with your colorful/metal objects about 1/4-1/2 of the way full
• Fill the remainder with oil or Colored Rice (plain rice works too)
• Place cap on bottle to test the look of it - add more objects or oil as needed
• When you are satisfied with bottle glue cap on using super glue of your choosing

The possibilities are endless with sensory bottles. Add Glitter to your baby oil for a fun twist and eye catching sparkle, or throw in some metal washers with the colored rice and use the magnets to seek them out. 

Some tips from our founding board member Ashley Heinrich on constructing your bottles: 
​"The baby oil is key to keeping your metal objects from not rusting, the glitter helps to mask any discoloration on the bottle that could be caused by the oil."
"I think the colored rice really works best for longevity purposes."