Sensory bottles can be used in so many different ways with toddlers and preschoolers! In my classroom, sensory bottles are used for calming down, exploring, science, literacy, math, and as an extension to what we are learning about! Our 5 Little Pumpkins sensory bottle goes perfectly with the fall theme and the classic children’s poem that we learn each year. This sensory bottle is super simple and take just minutes to put together! We love sensory play!
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Five Little Pumpkins Sensory Bottle
- candy corn pumpkins (or other tiny pumpkins)
- white northern dry beans
- VOSS water bottle
- super glue or hot glue (optional for securing the top)
If you are anything like me, you have the supplies for this sensory bottle on hand! I realized that I had 2 bags of harvest mix candy corn leftover from last year. It was expired (ok, there may have been some that were eaten anyway!), but looked like new so I separated the pumpkins out. Five went into the bottle.
I added the white beans to fill just over half of the bottle at first. I closed the lid and then played around with it. I decided that it needed more beans, but not too many more! Fill the bottle to your preferred level. In this bottle there needed to be enough beans to cover the pumpkins, but not enough to make it hard to see the pumpkins and beans travel from one end to the other.
Secure the top and your bottle is ready! I made one of these today, but will be making at least one more for my classroom. We’ll use them during circle time and then they will be in our sensory area of the classroom for my preschoolers to play with on their own.
In circle time, we will be reciting the 5 Little Pumpkins poem and adding pumpkins to our felt board to go along with the poem. The focus will be on counting pumpkins 1-5. The sensory bottle will be perfect for the end of the poem when all the pumpkins roll out of sight!
The little learners will get a chance to see if they can find all 5 pumpkins and then make them disappear again. The beans make a magical (even soothing) sound in the bottle that is inviting for toddlers and preschoolers.
Just in case you are not familiar with the poem mentioned in this post, here is one version! There are different versions that you can find online if you google 5 Little Pumpkins. This is the one I have memorized, so this is the one we use!
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, “Oh my! It’s getting late.”
The second said, “There are witches in the air.”
The third one said, “But I don’t care!”
The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run.”
The fifth one said, “I’m ready for some fun.”
Oooooh went the wind and out went the light!
And all 5 pumpkins rolled out of sight!
You don’t want to miss out on our other pumpkin learning activities like our Pumpkin Alphabet Puzzles!
Don’t miss out on any of the other dry ingredient sensory bottles below! And you can always find the complete collection of sensory bottles on the Discovery Bottles Blog Hop page!
Candy Corn Discovery Bottle | Preschool Inspirations
Alphabet Discovery Bottle | Sugar Aunts
Easy Halloween I Spy Bottle | One Time Through
Pumpkin Seed Discovery Bottles for Fall | Fun-A-Day
Love that poem – remember it from childhood! Cute idea!
Great idea. Five Little Pumpkins is always a big hit in my classroom and I’m so glad you shared this sensory bottle. I’m so excited to see that JoAns’s and Michael’s are putting out their Fall merchandise so it will be easy to find the candy pumpkins.
Thank you!
Check out the Dollar Tree or Target $1.00 section first. These prices are much more friendly to a teacher’s wallet.
I love the Halloween sensory themes too. So happy I saw this early enough to have them ready for Oct.
Thanks so much.
Beth
Love your idea i will surely use it in my circle time for story time and my students can observe thr sensory bottle thank you!
I’m so glad you’re loving the sensory bottle! My preschoolers love it too! 🙂