A thrifty tip for free toys: collect the lids off your milk bottles and jars. Wash them, dry them and give them to your children and see the creative ways they use them. (Make sure you don’t give very small children lids so small they could be a choking hazard.) My girls love them and come up with all sorts of ways to play with them.
1. Be artistic: what pictures can you make?
2. Try some maths: sort the tops into different sizes, working from smallest to largest in a long line.
3. Get classifying & talk about colours: sort the bottle tops into piles of each colour. L is always on the look out for any golden ones!
4. Add in some letters or shapes: Use a permanent marker pen to write letters or shapes onto the lids. Can you spot all the curved letters? Or find all the triangles?
5. Add numbers: and see if you can order the lids in numerical order, or use them to do sums.
6. Role play: Use the lids as money to play shop or as treasure for pirates to find.
Hand them over to you kids and see what they come up with – they always have the best ideas for play.
happily shared with teach mama We Play! at Childhood 101 and Show and Tell at ABC and 123
What a fantastic idea – great proof that anything can become a toy!
Such great ideas! And all new to me except the letter game. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for stopping by Maryanne – glad we had some new ideas for you 🙂
this is a good idea if you get bottles with lids, maybe I need to get everyone to save some for me
Hi Kelli – We find Grandma is a good source of interesting lids 😉
Fantastic ideas we also like to used lids as biscuits for a tea party 🙂
Hi Philippa – like the biscuit idea 🙂
I always find such wonderful ideas on here! Bottle tops are the bomb. I need to start collecting them again. And I’d LOVE to have you on my blog roll if you are interested.
https://www.beafunmum.com/about/blog-roll
Thanks for the invitation Kelly B – will check my shoes!
So many great ideas that I am going to have to leave myself a big note in the kitchen NOT to throw bottle tops out! 🙂
AmandaB – my husband thinks I’m crazy I’m sure as I’m always grapping stuff off him that he’s trying to bin – but that tinfoil would be such fun in the making box!!
I’ve been collecting bottle caps to do activities with. Thanks for the ideas!
Have fun with them Heather!
Thanks for sharing the idea to use the caps as pirate’s treasure or for role playing. Had done a post a while back around Earth Day and shared ways to reduce / reuse / recycle and talked about things you can do with these lids, too.
Here is the link to my blog post from back in April, as maybe it will give your readers some other ideas to try:
https://sunriselearninglab.blogspot.com/2010/04/ways-to-reduce-reuse-recycle-plastic.html
Have a nice weekend,
Colleen
Thanks for the extra ideas Colleen.
Great idea, thank you 🙂
Aah yes, bottle tops. We use them for all manner of fun 🙂