This activity promotes development and learning by encouraging children to identify various emotions, use sensory tools to cope with emotions.
Materials Needed:
- Variety of clean and clear plastic bottles with lids
- Food coloring
- Water
- Vegetable oil or baby oil
- Expression stickers or paper and crayons
- Tape
- Hot glue gun or strong glue
- Optional: Glitter and water beads or marbles
Participants: This activity is intended for adult/child interaction and independent play
Directions:
- Gather materials.
- Remove the labels from the bottles and fill each ¾ full with water.
- Add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil or baby oil to each water bottle. You can experiment with adding more or less to see how oil affects the water.
- Add food coloring to create one bottle each of red, blue, yellow, purple, and green. You will need to mix colors – show your child that mixing red and blue creates purple, and yellow with blue creates green.
- (Optional) Add glitter or beads if desired to each bottle. For example: add red or orange glitter to the red bottle.
Use stickers or create designs on paper to make faces on each of the bottles. Red bottle = angry face, blue bottle = sad face, yellow bottle = happy/joyful face, purple = fearful face, green = disgusted face. - Seal the bottles with hot glue (adult use only) or strong glue.
- Have your child identify their emotions by holding and shaking the color that coordinates with how they are feeling.
