#Family Friday --- Sensory Shakers Kids' #Craft

{Materials}

• Plastic bottle with labels removed
• Different types of noodles
• Pompoms or beads for color
• Bells or any other sound-makers
• Odds and Ends (I added some left-over pieces of colored straws from our Straw/Glue Art Craft.)
• Hot glue gun (to seal the cover) *optional
• ACTIVITY MUST BE SUPERVISED BY AN ADULT DUE TO USE OF SMALL OBJECTS 

Plastic bottle, 3 types of pasta, pompoms, bells, and straw pieces

{Process}

• Separate all of your materials into different bowls
• Show your child how to place to objects into the bottle
• Fill until 3/4 full
• Shake, Shake, Shake :)

{Skills Worked}

• Fine motor skills 
• Bilateral Coordination 
• Counting 
• Sensory (Textures, Colors, Sounds)

{Learning}

Fine-motor skills: picking up small objects with thumb and forefinger and placing into a small opening in the bottle.

Bilateral coordination: holding the bottle with one hand to stabilize it and putting the objects in with the other.

Counting practice: I would count the noodles aloud as he dropped them into the bottle.

Color practice: I would ask him to put a red or blue, etc pompom into the bottle.

Textures: The noodles had different shapes and textures (macaroni, fusilli and penne) especially compared to the soft fuzzy pompoms and metal bells.

Sounds: The little bells made noise alone and the plastic bottle cracked when squeezed. Once the shaker was complete it made loud or quiet sounds depending on how hard you shook it.


{Notes}

My two year old loves to sort small objects so I knew he would love this activity. He was obsessed with the tiny craft bells I had discovered when I raided my scrap-booking kit. He played with and shook the little bells a lot before placing them in the bottles.

His next choice were the pompoms. He loved the colors, and would put a few in at a time. All other objects went in one by one.

The dry noodles are what really makes the noise so I made sure he put many of them in the bottle.

I would get excited and say good job whenever he placed an object into the bottle so he got excited and squealed when the object dropped into the bottle.

It was interesting to see how he instinctively knew to hold the bottle with his left hand while filling it with his right so it would not tip over. (Bilateral Coordination)

He also spent much time moving the items from bowl to bowl. He put bowls inside of other bowls and rearrange the bowls on the table. He would have dumped out the shaker had I have let him but I wanted it complete to show him the sounds it would make.

Once he realized how much noise it made, he was in love. He ran all around the kitchen and dinning room shaking it and laughing. I could barely snap a picture, he was having so much fun.

The Sensory Shaker is now my secret weapon to getting him to lay still during diaper changes. I lay him down, hand it to him and he squeezes the bottle, looks at the items through the plastic and shakes it to make noise. Great distraction!

You can follow my Kids' Activities boards on Pinterest for more fun ideas.

If you like this almost FREE children's activity & craft idea, please share!