Discovery Bottles-ABC Version

I have been slowly recovering from my Vegas trip.  Something good to have come from my Vegas trip it seems that I have kicked my summer afternoon nap habit.  I tried to take a quick snooze this afternoon and found myself up and working on laundry.  That will be good come August. Last night I used our Cuisnart ice cream maker for the second time in  1 1/2 weeks.  We've had that thing for 18 months and never used and look at us now.  I'm not sure that is a good thing, however. 
Last night I got busy and decided to make one of my discover bottles for school.  I decided to make an ABC discovery bottle since it is definitely one of the one's I'll use at the beginning of the school year.  Here's what you'll need: an empty soda bottle with the label peeled off, ABC letters, rice and a hot glue gun.  I also have a small pair of wire cutters for the plastic letters.

I bought ABC letters at The Lob that are made to go on a necklace.  Make sure your letters are small enough to fit in your bottle or use a Gatorade bottle with the larger mouths.  Since my letters were from the jewelry department I went about cutting the loop off at the top of each letter. 

I then lined up my letters in alphabetical order to make sure I had them all.  Nothing like getting 1/2 way done, getting a phone call and coming back later and not remembering which letter you were on, thus dumping all your letters back out and starting over. 

Once all my letters where lined out and the loop cut off I dumped them into my bottle.
I then added rice to my bottle.  I made a simple funnel out of paper to help guide my rice into the bottle. 

When I was about 1/2 way finished I realized it was going to be very hard to find the letters in all that rice so I quickly made a second set of letters and added them to the bottle.  This is an activity for the beginning of the year, we don't need any frustrated kindergarteners. 

After I filled the bottle to almost the top, leave several inches of room to allow for shaking, I put the lid on the bottle and hot glued it shut. 

To hold kids accountable for their learning I have also included a recording sheet.  When a child finds a letter they get to circle it with a highlighter on the recording sheet.  They also can then take the recording sheet home so their parents can see they were learning in class.  Parents often equate worksheets with learning.  Although, we know this isn't true, it is very hard to change the thinking of parents.  So it is sometimes easier to find ways for children to enjoy learning and also record their learning.  In this case the recording sheet helps the kid learn alphabetical order when referring the the sheet to find the letter they just found in their discovery bottle.

There are many different things you can put in a discovery bottle.  I suggest if you are going to make some bottles that before you put the items in the discovery bottle you first take a picture of the items so kids with have an idea as to what they should be looking for in the bottle.  You can also use sand or different things for filler instead of rice.  I just used rice in this one because it is cheaper.  I've bought some white sand to use when I assemble my ocean unit discovery bottle.