Make an I Spy Bottle with Grandkids

On the Internet,  I have seen where others have made I Spy bottles with their children.

I thought that was a splendid idea — one that could easily be done with grandchildren.

(Blessed be the Internet.  How in the world did we ever survive before it came along?)

It was also an activity that my spectacular non-crafty skills could handle.

So, I stopped at a  local craft store and bought a fancy plastic bottle for each of my grandchildren.

I bought several smallish gizmos that would fit inside the bottle that I thought would be fun for the grandkids to find.

It was rather challenging because the mouth of the bottle wasn’t very big. I had to make sure that the things that I purchased would fit through the opening.

Here’s a list of things that I bought:

• teeny boats
• teeny trucks
• teeny trains
• teeny bees
• teeny lady bugs
• teeny dragon flies
• teeny shoes.

I hunted around the house and my not so vast craft box.  I gathered:

• beads
• yellow pom poms
• googly eyes
• clear ‘rocks’
• marbles
• thumb tacks
• beans
• popcorn kernels

Before the grandkids assembled their I Spy bottle, I laid out these items and took a picture of them. I printed the picture on card stock and covered it with clear contact paper.

My grandchildren put all of the items in their bottle. I filled the bottle about 3/4 full of white rice. I put super glue around the top of the bottle and then put the lid on tight.  (Didn’t want those little rascal grandkids to dump out the rice, you know!)

The grandkids could look at their card and then try and find things in their I Spy bottle.

Here’s what I learned from my experience. My 2 year old grandchildren didn’t have a very long attention span while we made them.  But then, I didn’t expect them to. And, they really don’t have an attention span to look for things very long.  I was surprised. I thought that they would spend more time looking for things.

However, my 4 year-old grandson absolutely loved making it and looking for things. So, I guess that this activity works better for older grandchildren.

I also learned that it’s best to have better lighting when you take pictures of the items. When I took the picture, the lighting was coming from the side so that there were shadows. I didn’t have time to do anything different with the lighting.  Oh well. The picture turned out okay but it could be better.

If you have grandchildren that are say 8 – 10 years old and maybe think they are too grown up to play with an I Spy bottle, they could be in charge of finding things around your house to put in the bottle and of assembling a bottle for a younger grandchild.  Creating one might be of more interest to them than playing with one.