Painting with Cars & Discovery Bottles

At Play Group last week our agency gave a presentation on toddler development with a variety of resources offered to support toddler development such as: CDC Milestones, CDC's Free Milestone Tracker App, Supporting Your Toddler's Development, 50 Activities Perfect For Your Toddler. 

While the parents were listening to our presentation, the children gathered around the activity table to paint tracks on the craft paper we set up. (As an aside, we learned pull-back cars aren't the cleanest cars to use. Fortunately the paint was washable.)

This bulldozer was used to scrape the puddle of paint.

We are trying to incorporate more literacy and music opportunities into our Play Group sessions. 

 After the parents finished up with the discussion, parents and their children created Discovery Bottles. We had a dozen, dry, empty plastic 11 oz/330 ml bottles. Any clear, plastic bottle will work.
We raided our craft cabinets and drawers at home for a variety of items to fill the bottles.

Ge gathered raffia, crinkle cut shredded paper, feathers, glitter, small toys, shells, bells, spiders, beads, rice, lentils, glycerin  (for bottles in which water was added as it increased the viscosity and allows objects for float longer.), water beads, glass jewels, sand. Use whatever you have on-hand, there is not need to purchase anything new or specific for this project- unless you want to, of course :)
Be sure to hot glue or super glue the lid on when your are done.

This bottle was simply orange sand, orange lentils and black spiders for a child who loves the show "Vamparina"