How to make sound sensory bottles

I made some sound sensory bottles for Little Bean using cheap items that I already had around the house. I wanted a range of tones so I used dried foods in various sizes, ranging from grains of rice up to dried chickpeas, plus some other items that made interesting sounds.

There are a lot of activities that you can do with these bottles. For babies, you could just let them play with the bottles on their own. They can explore the tactile feel of the bottles, develop their movement and co-ordination, and be stimulated by the different sizes, shapes, colours and sounds of the bottle contents. For toddlers and older children, you could do sorting activities. You could sort them in order from lowest tone to highest tone, quietest to loudest, least liked sound to favourite sound, or by the size of the contents.

You'll need:
6 x small plastic bottles (I used 375ml soft drink bottles)
6 x plastic drinking straws
2 x small bells (I used bells for cat collars as they fit through the bottle neck)
1/4 cup each of 4 dried foods (I used rice, chickpeas, kidney beans & lentil/mung bean)
Scissors
Super glue
Plastic funnel with a wide spout

If you wanted to use non-food contents for your bottles, you could try wooden or plastic beads, buttons, nuts and bolts, metal washers, small shells, fish tank pebbles, etc. The list is only limited by your imagination.

Cut the straws into 2 cm lengths and put into one bottle.
Put the bells in the next bottle.
Use the funnel to pour the dried food into the remaining four bottles.
Doing one bottle and lid at a time, put super glue on the inside edges of the bottle lids.
Make sure you get it into the lid grooves and quickly screw it on to the bottle.
Repeat for the rest of the bottles.
Leave them overnight so that the glue can fully cure and reach maximum strength.
Give the bottles to your child and be prepared for lots of noisy fun.