A sensory bottle is a wonderful and safe calming tool for all ages and we love that our Tashlich Sensory Bottle not only provides sensory feedback, but also is a wonderful way to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and help children connect to the ritual of Tashlich. The Tashlich Sensory Bottle is super simple to make. It only has a few ingredients! And it can be enjoyed and used by babies, children and grown ups alike!
What You’ll Need
- Plastic jar with lid. This one looks like a good option!
- Water
- Blue food coloring
- Oil
- Small rocks
- Funnel
Putting It Together
- Put your funnel into the top of your jar. If you don’t have a funnel, you don’t need to use one, but it will make it a lot easier!
- Pour water about 1/2 full of the bottle. No need to measure!
- Add food coloring to turn the water blue (we added a little too much food coloring, I think slightly less dark blue would be better).
- Use the funnel and add oil to about 2/3 full.
- Add small rocks.
- Tightly close the lid. Super glue closed if you wish.
- With your child, have them shake the bottle and watch what happens.
- Once they are ready to focus on a prompt, ask them to look at either an oil bubble or one of the rocks and think about an action that happened this past year that they don’t want to do again next year. Have them think about or name that action and how they want to do better in the new year.
- Check out our reel on Instagram to see how we made (and played!) this Tashlich Sensory Bottle!
Finished & Loving It!
Tashlich is one of my favorite rituals of the High Holidays, and all year long. When I can take the time to really pause and think deeply about my actions and how I want to improve, I feel hope and opportunities for positive change. Tashlich is also a ritual that is very easy for kids to take part in. Tashlich involves visiting a body of moving water and tossing in bird food (no more bread crumbs, we’ve learned they are so bad for wildlife!), rocks, leaves or sticks for every action that you want to positively change for the new year. In our house we don’t talk about these actions as sins or bad things, just actions you wish you could do better with next year.
My kids love all kinds of sensory play and there is something especially calming about sensory bottles. I feel like children instantly stop what they are doing and focus on watching the bubbles or items inside the bottle slowly drift. You can almost see how their whole system is getting better regulated. It’s amazing!
I love that I was able to combine this wonderful sensory tool with a connection to this special ritual that my children can understand. I invited them to focus on a bubble or a rock because of course I want this to be easy and accessible to them. The rocks are a great option for my family because those are what we tend to toss into our local pond for our Tashlich experience. In this activity, not only do they get a review of the ritual, they get a pretty hands-on way of practicing it before the real deal. And the fact that they get calming sensory feedback is just icing on the cake … or should I say honey on the apples? 🙂
We have a whole page dedicated to the High Holidays, our High Holidays Hub. Check it out! It includes some of the High Holidays activities we do this year, as well as the activities we’ve done in previous years.
And don’t forget our Rosh Hashanah Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards, our Yom Kippur Montessori-Style 3 Part Cards, or the High Holidays Montessori-Style 3 Part Card Bundle, all a wonderful way to introduce High Holidays!
The following sites are amazing resources for learning more about this holiday:
Chag Sameach!!
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