Beach in a Bottle

With beach week nearing it's end it was time to pack up the sensory/exploration area.  In order to continuing enjoying all our cool beach finds, we made a beach in a bottle.  It has all the fun of the beach without the sand everywhere!  To start, I rinsed out a 2 liter pop bottle and Eva helped scoop the sand from her tub into it via a funnel.

Then we sorted the sea shells into two piles- big and little.  To take the sorting a step further, Eva then had to sort the small ones into two more categories- fit into the bottle and don't fit.

We added the sea weed and sea gull feather from our beach trip along with some rocks, pompoms and gems (you never know when you'll find treasures at the beach!).  I squirted some hot glue into the top and screwed it on tight.  Now Eva can roll the bottle around and rediscover all the great beach finds.

We also made a simple beach dessert.  I put a graham cracker in a baggie and let Eva go to town breaking it up into crumbs.

I scooped some vanilla pudding into a cup and poured the "sand" over it.  The beach never tasted so good!