More Discovery Bottles

I've been experimenting with some more discovery bottle options. Some of my inspiration was obtained here and some of it came from the materials I have around the house. While digging through my craft supply cabinet I discovered I had a lot of baby oil. I think some of us was given to us at the Eskimo's baby shower over two years ago and some of it I purchased for activities. Regardless, none of it had ever been opened and I decided to do something with it. One of the bottles I made is filled with baby oil, glitter, a couple drops of food coloring, and some plastic beads. I wasn't really thinking when I put the food coloring in there. It was really late last night, and I had intended on dying the oil. However, food coloring and oil don't mix. But what ended up happening was way cooler. When you shake the bottle, not only does the glitter go all over the place, but the food coloring separates into tiny little droplets in the bottle. And because the oil is thick, the glitter takes a nice long time to settle. I love it. :) FYI, the glitter is silver, so all the green you see in there is the food coloring. I also have lucked out because my sister in law uses these tiny water bottles and has agreed to give them to me when they're empty. We use reusable water bottles in our house, so I would have had to go out and spend extra money otherwise. Score!

The second one I made was inspired by the link above. I actually got the Eskimo to help me with this one. We got out the pipe cleaners, I cut them up, and he put them in the bottle. He loves being a helper, so this was right up his alley. Also good for his fine motor skills, even if he did manage to get some of the dog and cat hair in the bottle with the pipe cleaners. :) Then, we went over to Teacher Heaven and bought a magnet wand for $2.09. Check it out:

Neat, right? This was, of course, completely fascinating. He experimented with sliding the magnet up and down, and pulling it away suddenly to watch the pieces fall. He also experimented with using the front of the magnet, the side of the magnet, and the end of the magnet. I think he got the most out of this one because he was involved from the beginning. He even helped me drink the water yesterday. :)

Before you ask, yes, I hot glued the lids on. I'm hoping to keep these discovery bottles (and these and these) around for a while. I'm slowly adding to our collection with an end goal of having enough to rotate them daily over a 2 or 3 week period. Hopefully that will keep the Eskimo from getting too bored with them. Now that we have a magnet wand, I hope to do many more magnetic discovery bottles. Fun!