Christmas Sensory Bottles for Kids

These Christmas sensory bottles contain holly, snowflakes and stars to create visual and tactile sensory bottles for kids. Great for babies and toddlers.

Sensory bottles are one of our favorite items to make. Kids can become involved in the creation of them, and they are safe for babies and toddlers to play with. These Christmas sensory bottles encourage sensory play and language development in kids and are perfect for mess-free sensory play. Plus, they are SUPER easy to make!

Christmas Sensory Bottles for Babies and Toddlers

Sensory bottles provide so many fun learning opportunities for kids. They use gross motor skills to shake and move the bottles, which makes contents move around the inside of the bottle, stimulating their visual sense. Because of the glue inside these bottles, the items move and fall slowly, creating a mesmerizing visual sensation.

Additionally, the bottles encourage language development as you discuss the bottle with your child!

What you need for your Christmas sensory bottles:

clear glue
warm water
4 bottles (Voss water bottles or these plastic bottles)
Christmas confetti (stars, snowflakes, holly – can be found at the Dollar Tree)
red glitter glue
gold glitter
hot glue (optional)

To make the Christmas sensory bottles:

Watch the video below of how we assembled the Christmas sensory bottles, then read below for more detail.

Add clear glue to 3 of the bottles, about a quarter of the way up. The clear glue in the bottles makes the items in the bottles slow-falling. This also adds a bit of weight to the bottle, adding to the sensory and gross-motor experience.

To the clear glue, and the various Christmas confetti. We chose to use holly, snowflakes and stars which can be Christmas themed or just Winter themed if you like! All of these confetti items were found at the Dollar Store.

To the fourth bottle, add the red glitter glue and gold glitter instead of the clear glue.

Add warm water to the top of the items in the bottle, leaving about 1/2 and inch of space in the top so that the contents of the sensory bottles can move around.

*Hot glue the cap to the top of the bottle if you are worried that children might open the bottles and potentially choke on the contents. I choose not to glue the caps on because then I can empty the bottles at the end of the season and save the contents or re-use the bottles (check out how we used these for Fall sensory bottles prior to this). As an alternative, you can wrap duct tape around the outside of the cap, making it difficult to open, but still able to re-use the bottles.

Get our FREE mini pamphlet with sensory play ideas, recipes and more below!

Snowy Day Sensory Bottles

When playing with the snowy day bottle, discuss the shape of the snowflakes, and how real snowflakes all have a different shape. The confetti might be shiny or metallic and varied in color. These are all great details to discuss with your little ones to build vocabulary!

Starry Night Sensory Bottle

Using golds, silvers, and some sparkly fake snow, this sensory bottle looks like a Winter starry night! Kids can swirl the stars around the bottle, creating nice visual stimulation as well.

If choosing to discuss this sensory bottle with a Christmas theme, you can call this one the Star of Bethlehem or Christmas Star sensory bottle!

Christmas Holly Sensory Bottle

For years, holly has been a symbolic Christmas decoration as the shiny green leaves and red berries stand out beautifully against the stark white of Winter in many places.

This makes for a gorgeous sensory bottle that kids will love to stare at. As a warning, some of the confetti can turn the water and glue in the bottle a darker color as they sit for a few days. But, they are still mesmerizing nonetheless.

Sparkly Red Sensory Bottle

My 5 year old loves all things sparkly and Christmas, so this is one of her sure favorites. As a side note, this is my favorite thing about sensory bottles, kids of ALL ages can enjoy these (…adults too!).

The gold glitter makes this super sparkly, and the glue keeps it slow-moving, so kids can really watch the glitter fall through the bottle.

Take the sensory bottles outside to see how the sun shines through them or practice stacking them. There are so many ways to play and learn with these, the opportunities are endless. Have so much fun making your Christmas sensory bottles for babies and toddlers!