Discovery Bottle Robot

Add this cute robot-themed discovery bottle to your list of sensory activities for preschoolers! The robot sensory bottle will actually work for a variety of preschool themes. So keep it out in the classroom for a few weeks. You may be surprised with how creative students get while engaging with the nuts and bolts discovery bottle.

Are you following my Robot Theme Pinterest board?

It’s always interesting to me to find out what each class of kiddos is into. While there are certain preschool themes most kids enjoy, the topics still vary year to year. As often as possible, I integrate the kids’ interests in my preschool plans. With this year’s class, I’m already planning a variety of robot activities for the end of the year. This interactive robot discovery bottle came about as I was doing that planning.

interactive robot discovery bottle

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I’ve been trying out different teas recently, including this Argo tea. Since I’m a preschool teacher and tend to use all kinds of things for my classroom, I saved the bottles. They’re perfect for this robot discovery bottle, if I do say so myself!

In talking with the preschool children, it was decided that our robot bottle needed googly eyes and funky arms made of black pipe cleaners. Out came the handy dandy glue gun! Yes, the arms do appear to be where ears should be. But the kids determined that the robot didn’t need ears anyway. Then I just drew a smiley face on the glass with a permanent marker. Based on the kids’ input, we’ll need to make a few more robot bottles that have different facial expressions!

Once the bottle itself was taken care of, it was time to add the robot’s bits and bobs inside. I decided  nuts and bolts would be a great filler for the bottle. On some of the nuts, I wrote a letter of the alphabet – both uppercase and lowercase. So inside the discover bottle, in addition to plain nuts and bolts, are bolts with letters on them.

The finishing touch was some aluminum foil around the top of the bottle. Then everything was good to go.

using the robot discovery bottle

I am positive the children will find all kinds of new ways to use this robot, here are a few possible uses for it –

• Children can manipulate the closed and filled bottle. They’ll be able to explore the sound the nuts and bolts make this way. They’ll also be able to look out for different letters on the nuts within the bottle.
• The kids can dump out the contents and get to exploring! Nuts and bolts can be sorted and matched, and the letters hidden within can be found and put into order.

Would your kiddos enjoy making and using this interactive robot discovery bottle? Let me know if you end up making one!

Robot-Themed Preschool Lesson Plans

If you have some robot-lovin’ preschoolers, take a look at these plans for the preschool classroom and home preschool families. Each set has a week’s worth of lesson plans, full of hands-on learning activities about robots. There’s science, literacy, math, and more planned for the week, with ideas that kids can do in various grouping sizes. The plans also come with a book list, activity explanations, and printables that correspond with the hands-on plans.

Get yours here: Preschool Classroom | Home Preschool

For more robot activities, pop over and see what other #TeachECE writers are up to –

• Erase a robot reading game from The Educators’ Spin On It
• Robot beginning sounds activity from Growing Book by Book
• Robot alphabet puzzle from Learning 2 Walk
• Robot alphabet card games and activities from Mom Inspired Life
• Dollar Store DIY Robot Toys from Capri + 3