Magnetic Sensory Bottles

We love playing with magnets at home, E loves using her magnetic fish rod for fishing out jingly bells from a bottle, or making pipecleaners move, so I wanted to make a toddler group friendly activity because it's not something parents will necessarily have at home.

The main expendure were Learning Resources Magnetic Wands, which are approximately £12 for six, then ten clear plastic 250ml bottles (approximately £10).

I decided to try and have different things in the bottles that varied in how magnetic they were. The best are the jingly bells. I opted for both plastic covered as they were more colourful and plain metal paper clips (with non magnetic table confetti for colour and to see how they seperate). Mini Pegs are less magnetic as mostly wood, but interesting to compare them to the bells, and finally pipe cleaners - I found that they tinsel ones worked better as they have less covering the wire). I didn't use nuts and bolts as they don't sell those in Hobbycraft and I didn't want to visit a hardware store.

We'll be storing the bottles and magnetics in a Really Useful Box, and tied ribbons from the box to the magnets to stop the toddlers carrying round the hall.