Home » Activities » Colours » Games using bottle tops

Games using bottle tops

by

lids

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

Comments

    • Cathy @ NurtureStore says

      Thanks for stopping by Maryanne – glad we had some new ideas for you 🙂

  3. kelli says

    this is a good idea if you get bottles with lids, maybe I need to get everyone to save some for me

    • Cathy @ NurtureStore says

      Hi Kelli – We find Grandma is a good source of interesting lids 😉

    • Cathy @ NurtureStore says

      Thanks for the invitation Kelly B – will check my shoes!

  6. amandab says

    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! 🙂

    • Cathy @ NurtureStore says

      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!!

  8. Colleen - Sunrise Learning Lab says

    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

NurtureStore