Beach In A Bottle

Squirrel has thoroughly enjoyed using his beach combing finds for his activities, and this one certainly is up there with one of his favoured activities of the unit.

We used:

A large empty and clean plastic bottle without too much texture in the shape.
A funnel.
A spare tray and bucket to use as containers.
A collection of clean shells and stones of various sizes.
Some strips of fabric seaweed.
Some clean sand.
Water.
A funnel that fits the mouth of the bottle.

We started by getting to know the bottle mouth, and playing with the shells and stones, observing and testing each of them, using the descriptions “big” and “small”, enjoying making the association that the “small” bits fitted.

We also emphasized the “small” things often requiring to be turned around to fit through, something Squirrel found fascinating, and examined each piece closely as he tried different angles.

Lots of mathematical thinking and logical processing practice in filling the bottle with the shells and stones, and sorting those that were too big back into the tray.

We practiced poking the weeds into the bottle with our fingers.

Using a cup we tried pouring some sand into the bottle, first of all without the funnel, so Squirrel could witness that most of the sand was missing the mouth of the bottle. We then fitted the funnel, and poured the sand into the funnel first, and observed that not even a little bit went on the floor while using it! Most interesting!

We then repeated the same process with water.

We fitted the bottle with its cap nice and firmly when there was enough water to fill the bottle generously, and Squirrel sat rolling it around, watching it all travel around and mix up in the water, and checking it closely!

The bottle now lives on a low shelf where Leo can come and see it, and he loves showing it to our guests!

 

This activity is from Unit 1, The Seaside and Rockpools.