Make learning about letters FUN for your little learners using letter sensory bottles! It’s like letter hide and seek in a bottle. Students can shake, twist, and flip the bottles to find letters. These letter sensory bottles are perfect for quiet time, the library or literacy center, morning table time, or use during transitions when students have to wait.
To enhance the lesson, I created a FREE Letter Hunt printable you can use with these bottles too. Students can mark off or trace the letters (aka fun handwriting practice) as they find them.
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Now, let me tell you how I made each bottle!
Pom Pom Letter Sensory Bottle
- empty bottle
- fill with small pom poms and letter beads
- hot glue or superglue the lid closed
- cover the top with tape
Rice Letter Sensory Bottle
- empty bottle
- fill with colored rice and letter beads
- to color rice: place dry rice in a baggie with a few drops of liquid watercolor, shake until coated and lay flat on foil to dry
- cover the top with tape
Loom Band Letter Sensory Bottle – This bottle can be tricky for younger students who have weak visual discrimination skills. If you want to make this bottle for younger students use white letter beads instead of the transparent letter beads. It looks beautiful at the light table regardless of what kind of letter beads you use!
- empty bottle
- fill with loom bands, letter beads, and water
- hot glue or superglue the lid closed
- cover the top with tape
Write the Letters!
Challenge your students and add a Letter Hunt printable to this activity! Now students can find a letter in the bottle, identify the letter, and hunt for it on the letter page. It’s a fun way to practice writing letters and strengthen those little fingers and wrists.
>> Grab the FREE Letter Hunt Printables from my TpT store HERE <<
There are several Letter Hunt pages to pick from. You can pick the page or pages that best fit the needs of the students in your classroom. If they are younger, they can simply color, mark, or scribble on the letter box.
Want to connect a children’s book to the activity? It’s super simple! Read your one of your favorite ABC books or read the book I Spy Letters! It is an engaging board book with simple text. Students find various letters of the alphabet on each page. I love listening to my student’s conversations when they read this book. I hear students using positional words to talk about where the letter is on the page. They also discuss the sounds the letters make and describe what the letters look like.
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After reading this book to the class, I put out Letter Sensory Bottles next to my basket of I Spy books in the library center with Letter Hunt printables on clipboards. It’s an activity students can do again and again. Place the Letter Hunt printables in dry erase pockets to save paper.
You can use craft supplies you have on hand to make letter sensory bottles. Be creative and have fun! Just be sure to hot glue and/or tape the top on. For this project, I used letter beads, colorful pom poms, and loom bands. If you want to see all my favorite sensory bottle goodies, check out my Sensory Bottle Amazon List HERE.
Go grab this Letter Hunt FREEBIE from my store HERE.
Check out more hands-on letter activities by clicking one of the photos below!
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