HOMEMADE BOTTLE CAP-LETTER BOARD

We have found this board to be one of the most engaging activities within our nursery setting. Let us tell you why...

Why do we love this board so much?

👶🏼👧🏽 We have found that children as young as 7 months old have found enjoyment in this board. So long as younger children are supervised, they will find great joy in figuring out how it works.

🖐🏻👀 The board encourages children to practice their hand-eye coordination and also encourages sensory development.

✍🏻 The children are tested on their fine motor skills if they wish to remove the bottle caps. It is often difficult for children to grasp the movement of removing and replacing the caps by twisting them clockwise or anti-clockwise so this board is great practice!

🟢 COLOURS! 🔴- Colours are always a winner when trying to engage children’s attention. The children enjoy finding different ways to manipulate different patterns with the colours and also enjoy grouping the caps in accordance to their colour or size.

🔠 For older children, this is a fantastic activity for practicing their alphabet, matching the letters on the caps to those on the board and then gradually beginning to link letters to sounds.

🔶 This board is incredibly versatile- you don’t want to do letters anymore? No problem! Just paint over the letters, replace the bottle caps and do numbers, words, pictures or anything else you think of instead!

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🔧⛓HOW WE MADE IT ⚙️🔩

What you need:

▪️ Bottles... 26 of them. We used milk bottle lids as they’re all the same size and therefore easy to replace, but if you want to give your children a further challenge, different shapes and sizes of bottles would be great!

▪️A hot glue gun. I think any strong glue would be fine as long as it was given time to dry 😊

▪️ Plywood- one piece, sanded down. Using a piece of thick cardboard would be fine, however it is unlikely to be as long-lasting as wood.

▪️ Paint- we painted ours using standard white wall paint.

▪️ Permanent marker- for the letters.

Instructions:

1) Cut necks of the bottles off and put them all to one side. (Keep the lids with them)

2) Sand the plywood down so that the edges are smooth.

3) Stick the necks of the bottles on using the hot glue gun- it is up to you where you place them, so long as you make sure they all fit.

4) Paint & let dry- if you wish to paint, now is the time!

5) Use your permanent marker to write the letters above the bottle necks on the board. (You could always do numbers or even words if you wanted to change it up a bit)

6) Twist the lids tightly onto the necks once they are stuck down properly. Once the lids are on, write the matching letters, numbers or words onto the lids- this ensures that they are straight when your children go to play with it.

6) Let your children play!

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