Foil discovery bottle

Discovery bottles are great for entertaining little (and not so little) ones.

Here is a really simple one we made from left over tin foil from Easter egg wrapping and a juice bottle. You could use regular foil if you didn't have any other spare.

The Fairy helped me to make little balls and pop them inside a clean juice bottle.

The Frog loved the rattling sound as well as the bright colours.

Have you seen our autumn discovery bottle?

Autumn {Fall} Discovery bottle

I adore conkers, I love how they feel and how shiny they are when they first pop out of their case. So when we were in the park the other weekend I picked some up and put them in my pocket. The Fairy loves to play with them too. I do get a bit nervous about The Frog playing with them as they are 'choking size'.

As I was thinking about how he could play with them when I remember his love of discovery bottles- an Autumn (or Fall) bottle seemed a perfect solution. If you've not come across these before they are basically bottles with things in to discover! Older children can observe it and predict, younger ones can use it in a similar way to a rattle (or eat it). You can put anything that takes your fancy in them, the first one I eve made was for the Fairy when she was little (10 months)- its got glitter and coloured water in and still gets used today (and she's 4!). The Frog has one he adores with plastic beads (think he likes to make noise to compete with his big sis' chatting). I seal the top with a hot glue gun just to make sure it isn't going to get opened (I also make sure they are not played with unsupervised just in case they do).

To our base of conkers I added a small leaf, a fir cone and a cork (I know that's not strictly autumnal but it's a good colour and we had it in the kitchen).

As you can see from the photos The Frog loves waving it around. The Fairy likes to borrow it too.