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Play & Learn with Bottle Tops!

“I love these little plastic lids!”

Bottle Tops have brought so many wonderful and creative ideas to my kids play times.  I am amazed that they still manage to find new ideas for using them!

I thought I would share some of these creative ideas that may be transferred into your child’s play.

Start Collecting!!  

I think we have about 60 lids and still growing!  I recommend storing them in some way as I found that these ended up from one end of the house to the other! My kids had been playing with the lids for some time, when I discovered at pack up time, these lids were just left inside bowls or toys that they had been playing with.  The bottle tops did not have a home!

I involved my kids to help solve this problem and we came up with: recycling an empty ice cream container and decorating it with circles made from tracing around the lids, colouring them in and cutting them out.  We then used sticky tape to put them onto the container.

Involving your kids in the organisation of the bottle tops gives them a sense of ownership and pride of their belongings. They are more likely to look after their things and most importantly put them away PROPERLY at pack up time!

Let’s Play 

The bottle tops are great for a pretend breakfast cereal.  Use an empty cereal box, sticky tape the lid closed and cut an opening for pouring.  So much fun for imaginative play!

More Play Ideas 

Hours of cooking! Bottle tops are great for imaginative play, cooking and serving food.  My two eldest made flower cakes in a restaurant.

Pretend Bottle Top Money 

Pretend money for imaginative play shopping.

Creating

What else can be created?  My girls love making flowers.

More Creating 

Bottle tops are great for construction and building houses.

Making Words, Letters and Names 

Making letters that are in your child’s name, numbers  or even making their name.  That’s if you’ve got enough bottle tops!

Sorting

Bottle tops can be used to make patterns and predicting what comes next?  Sorting and classifying into groups of colour.  This is another fun way to help reinforce and learn about colours.  Kids learn through different modes of stimulus!

A bit of Maths 

Bottle tops can be used as a problem solving tool when learning basic number sentences. I love the size!  They are chunky, colourful, and great for little hands and kids seem to be drawn to them.   There are several numeracy activities where you can utilise the bottle tops.  I will be going more into detail how they can be utilised in numeracy activities in a future post.

Drawing

These clever little lids can even be used in making and creating pictures.   Tracing around the bottle tops to create drawings of flowers, caterpillars and the sun.  The ideas are endless!

The Imagination 

These lids always find a way into my girls play times.  This is something they created during their imaginative play.

Imaginative Play 

I captured this moment when the girls were playing.  They were scooping food into the lids and collecting them for something.  It just reinforces that these lids encourages the imagination and bring another element to creative play.

I love these bottle tops for learning because:

  1. Kids seem to be drawn to these colourful and chunky lids and they can bring an element of fun and play to learning.
  2. They can be used as a concrete tool for problem solving number sums.  They can also be used for sorting, classifying and predicting activities.
  3. The bottle tops are strong, robust and great for little hands and fingers to manipulate which is beneficial for fine motor development.  Fine motor is important for strength and control of the hands and fingers for writing in school age kids.
  4. Encourages the imagination and brings another dimension to creative play. Imaginative play also helps children learn social, practical and lateral problem solving strategies which then can be transferred into the adult world.

Other Ideas for using bottle tops :

Creative Play – Mini Cupcakes

Imaginative Play – Baker’s Shop

7 thoughts on “Play & Learn with Bottle Tops!”

  1. I also drill holes in the top of the lids and use them for threading experiences with toddlers. And babies just love to post them into my old formula tins that i decorate and cut a slit in (or shoe boxes) So many great uses!!!

    A

  2. Amylynn Robinson (@1MommysJourney)

    I’ve been collecting bottle caps for a few weeks now knowing they were a gold mint BUT NOT knowing what to do with them! I glued numbers on the top of 10 of them for some counting activities and planned to glue the ABC”s on to some of them and I had some metal ones (from frappachino bottles) for the clank cans that someone already mentioned but now I have SOOOOOOOOOOO many more ideas. Thank you for posting!!!!

    1. Thanks Amylynn, we have soooo many bottles here as I just can’t bare to throw any new ones in the bin. Like you said……a gold mint, haha! I think I am going to have to come up with a new activity for them. I love how you glued numbers on them, great idea! I actually have a printable for this and alphabet letters saved here in draft but haven’t had the chance to published them yet……….thank you for reminding me and motivating me to get them on the site. xx

  3. What a wonderful post, with so many great ideas! Thank you. I have linked my bottle tops ideas URL to my blog name above…if you would like to come and see some of our bottle top creations and fun 🙂

    Take care,
    Georgia

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Hi and welcome to Learning 4 Kids!

Hi and welcome to Learning 4 Kids!

My name is Janice and I am an Early Childhood Teacher in Australia.

I have a strong passion and love for teaching and creating meaningful learning experiences for my students. What I love most is watching children discover in those amazing light bulb moments. I hope Learning4kids brings you some useful ideas.

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