Suspended Fall Leaves Discovery Bottle

*** Thousands of infants and children have ended up in the hospital after ingesting water beads and many retailers are no longer selling them. I have removed my water bead product links out of an abundance of caution. ***

This is one more fun and easy autumn sensory/discovery bottle with a secret ingredient and a cool surprise!

Sensory bottles are really neat and calming to play with. It’s fun to shake them up and watch all of the glitter fall to the bottom. I have played around a lot with the ratios of the liquid ingredients to see what makes the glitter fall faster and what makes it fall more slowly. I have been wanting to figure out how to create a discovery bottle where the contents don’t move at all, where they are suspended inside. The revelation came to me as I was playing with my kids one day.

My boys really enjoy playing with water beads. I make up a batch of them on a regular basis and we have all sorts of fun with them. One interesting feature of the clear water beads is that they seem to disappear in water. My six-year-old loves to play games trying to find them. As I played with him one day I began wondering what it would look like if I used clear water beads in a sensory bottle instead of the typical liquid ingredients.

First I tried putting some clear water beads in a bottle and adding some chunky glitter. I shook up the bottle to get the glitter to disperse. A lot of it ended up sticking to the sides of the bottle, but some of it was in the middle. When I added water, all the glitter fell to the bottom. I decided to try something different.

I had some autumn leaf table scatter on hand, so I put some of it into the bottle with the water beads. The leaves stayed put, and when I added water, it looked super neat. The clear water beads virtually disappeared and it looked like the table scatter was suspended in the bottle. How fun! Now that I knew my idea worked, it was time to make it look pretty.

I emptied everything out of the bottle and put a couple of handfuls of water beads in the bottom. Then I alternated one acrylic leaf and a few orange acrylic gems with one handful of beads, using a wooden down to position the leaves and gems just the way I wanted them. Once the water beads and leaves/gems had reached the top of the bottle, I added the water.

This is one of my favorite discovery bottles. It is super cool that the leaves look like they are floating inside of it, and it was so easy to make.

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If you are interested in creating a Suspended Fall Leaves Discovery Bottle, this is what I used:

The links in this post contain affiliate links and I will receive a small commission from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).

• 11 oz VOSS water bottle – Target
• Water Beads
• Autumn table scatter – Amazon
• Orange gem table scatter – Amazon
• Water
• Wooden Dowel – Target
• Super glue (for gluing the lid shut) – Amazon

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Thank you for checking out my Suspended Fall Leaves Discovery Bottle!

Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.
He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed,
Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

Psalms 126:5-6

~ Sarah ~