This is one of those things I’ve been SUPER excited about putting together! It’s the kind of excitement where you can’t stop thinking about it until the project is complete—and then you just want to sit and stare at it for hours once it is. Not only do these jars provide hours of fun, but they’re incredibly beautiful too! I’ve been trying really hard to be patient until I could find or collect the right “bottles” to make it work for us. I started saving our plastic peanut butter jars, but even with the kiddos’ intense love for peanut butter-only sandwiches, it was taking much longer than I anticipated.
Then, I found the jars you see in the picture above at the Dollar Tree, and that, of course, made them even more perfect! Because I hesitated on the size, I regretfully only bought two at first and then spent DAYS searching Dollar Tree stores for more!
In a perfect world, I’d love to say we took the time to find each item for the jars together, but it would have taken forever. So, I did the searching and then placed everything in a bin for us to sort into jars by color together. The sorting gave them a sense of ownership and pride in our Discovery Jars. And, of course, anytime they find something new to add, we most definitely do! :)
I love that we call these our "Discovery Jars." Every single time we play with them, we discover a new way to explore the items—and learning takes place in the process. THAT could not possibly make this momma’s heart any happier. One of the reasons I love the size of these jars is because the items inside are big enough for us to take out and explore on a regular basis. I even tried to stay away from including super tiny items that our littlest one wouldn’t be able to resist putting in his mouth. The jars sit on a beautiful bookshelf that we were blessed with (thank you, Father God, for always knowing the desires of my heart). I keep a large bin on that shelf, so whenever the kiddos want, they can grab a jar—or two, or ALL of them, as my two-year-old prefers—and just play, play, play!
Here’s some of the fun we’ve had while discovering our Discovery Jars.
Open-ended play: This will never get old! I hope and pray that my little ones never cease to use their imagination and creativity while playing. Between all that's in these jars they should never run out of silly things to create. They also love just stacking jars (castles) before they come tumbling down!
Number Identification and 1:1 Counting: The kids discovered a die while playing with the contents of our green jar, and suddenly, we found ourselves playing a game! The jar’s lid was the perfect size to both roll the die in and contain its roll. We all took turns rolling, identifying the numeral, and choosing that number of objects from the bin. Wow, this turned out to be a surprisingly fun, easy, and exciting game! They were so patient with each other while taking turns and were excited to choose their own objects.
You could easily play until you’ve emptied the items from the bin, or, if you want to make it competitive, you could establish a “winner” based on the most or least items retrieved. You could also pull out a few ice trays or egg cartons and have them place their collected items in. The first to fill up all their spots is the winner! Whoo-hoo, so much FUN!
I admit, at first I hesitated to place ALL of our cute colored dice in the Discovery Jars. I didn’t want them to be taken out of their “very special” labeled place on the “very special” shelf. Well, that quickly went out the window, and I grabbed every color die I could find to place in the remaining jars. Every time we pull out a jar to play with, I can only hope we’ll get the chance to play this game again! There is no time like NOW. Learning is happening, and that is far more important than anything “looking nice” on a shelf.
Memory Games: My hubby and I love any opportunity we get to play memory games with the kids. Besides the fact that they’re FUN, they’re also so good for their little brains! I was always really intrigued by the memory lessons in my Developmental Psychology class in college. I have to admit, though, I was never very good at the exercises. I tried REALLY hard but always disappointed myself with how few I could remember. It excites me to start memory training really early with the kids by playing games like these.
We started nice and easy by strategically placing just a few objects neatly in the bin. We took turns closing our eyes, and whoever was “it” would remove one object to hide behind their back. Then we’d open our eyes, take a look at the items, and try to remember which one was missing.
My two-year-old didn’t quite understand the concept of the game, but he was so funny when it was his turn to be “it.” As soon as we were ready to guess which item was removed, he’d yell out the answer. Oh! We really enjoyed that! We chuckled and chuckled and chuckled! He is seriously too cute!
Exploring with sense of touch: I give my two-year-old all the credit for engaging us in this activity. He started stuffing a ball into a sock that was supposed to be on his foot, haha! (Don’t worry, it was pretty clean ;)) A little light bulb went off in my head, and we took off with his idea.
So, we took turns choosing an object while everyone else closed their eyes, then placed it into the sock (no pEEking!). It was then everyone else’s job to hold the sock, feel around, and try to guess what object was inside. We were having WAY too much fun to stop and search for a more appropriate “bag.” Oh no, there was none more appropriate than my son’s precious sock at that very moment. <3
For the record, we’ve played this game since then, and we did use a larger cloth bag with a drawstring top. This gave us the chance to place our hands in the bag and feel around while guessing. It provided a completely different sensory experience. We loved it!
I should mention that it’s easier for little ones to cheat when using a bag, haha! I will never forget my sweet princess’s face. She tried soooo hard to keep her eyes from peeking into the bag as she slid her hand in. Oh, goodness! I do have to say she gets it honestly... It’s soooo hard not to peek!
Reading, Identifying, and Classifying: I’ve really been longing for a way to incorporate literacy into our Discovery Jar playtime. I started by using a whiteboard and writing the label of an item in the bin. My daughter would then do her best to sound out the word and find it. Yay, it was a success!
I was inspired to create this for my Gabby to access whenever she desired. I cut up little pieces of construction paper and wrote labels for many (but not all) of the items in each jar. I hot-glued a magnet to the lid, used a metal clip to hold the labels, and secured them right to the magnet! Oh, how I felt like Tinker Bell in that moment—tinkering with lost things to create something truly wonderful!
I also tried to prepare for the inevitable lid mix-up when my two-year-old dumps multiple jars out to play with at once by writing the color name on the back of each card. This has been VERY helpful!
Ahh, I just love all the learning that's going on with these jars!!! The magnet on the lid also serves for another incredible purpose as we can use it to help us classify objects as magnetic or non-magnetic! Magnets are ALWAYS so much fun to play with! Here's my sweet princess showing me that the small washer on the sea turtle is magnetic.
WOW to the endless possibilities for sorting and classifying with these items! The pictures above show just a few groups we came up with. I'm SO excited that we can continue to classify based on attributes like:
- Texture
- Color
- Size
- Weight
- Shape (3-D)
- Phonics
- Magnetic and Non-Magnetic
And FINALLY...
Beginning Sounds: For this activity we worked together on isolating beginning sounds and placed them on the carpet where they belonged. We quickly noticed many letters had no friends and few letters had many. What a great way to get some mathematics vocabulary in by asking which letter has the most, fewest, more than, less than, equal to and so on! We laughed about the fact that the majority of the items in the B..b..blue jar began with the letter B!
