Goodnight Moon I Spy Bottle

Goodnight Moon I Spy Bottle | Mama Papa Bubba

Preschool Book Club weeks are the best weeks. ☺  Miss G and I love exploring books and coming up with engaging, playful activities to go with them.  And the best part?  When we’re done with ours, we get to try the activities our friends at Buggy and BuddySugar AuntsFrogs Snails and Puppy Dog Tails, and Homegrown Friends came up with too!  So much fun.

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This week’s book, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, just may be the most classic of all classic children’s books.  While its appeal may not be blatantly apparent at first glance, its gentle and calming poetry paired with its muted colours and understated illustrations are pretty much the perfect concoction to lull little ones into a near meditative state before bedtime each night.  ‘In the great green room / There was a telephone / And a red balloon / And a picture of – / The cow jumping over the moon…’   Ahhh… it’s like music to your ears if it’s a story you’ve heard several times.  It’s also full of fun little details, one of which is a teeny tiny mouse hidden on each coloured page.  And that teeny tiny little mouse?  He’s what inspired our Goodnight Moon I Spy Bottle!  Since she was wee, Miss G has loved finding him on each page, so why not run with that idea and make a whole bottle full of fun Goodnight Moon things to search for?!

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Sadly, we didn’t have a teeny tiny mouse to include in our bottle, but as we flipped the pages of the book for inspiration, we found all sorts of other fun things to hide.  Included was a little red balloon we made by gluing a little baker’s twine to a red pom, a Safari Good Luck Mini cow from this set, a Safari Good Luck Mini bear from this set, a LEGO chair, two little LEGO kittens {the black and white one is from this set},  a pair of mittens cut out of craft foam, a LEGO comb and brush from this set, plus another brush from this set, two LEGO bunnies from this set, two glow-in-the-dark moons and a glow-in-the-dark star from this set, and some acrylic star gems.

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With our items collected, we arranged them in a circular shape and snapped a photo that we’d use later.

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Then, we gathered up a few other items in order to create our I spy bottle…  An empty plastic peanut butter jar as our ‘bottle’ and blue rice {dyed using our usual method and our beloved Wilton gel food colourings} and some white iridescent stars to represent the starry night sky seen throughout the story’s pages.

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Putting the I spy bottle together really couldn’t get any easier. All we did was fill the peanut butter jar with layers of rice, stars, and our Goodnight Moon items so that everything was well combined and spread out…

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Then we glued on the lid using a thick strip of glue from our low temp mini glue gun.

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With our bottle filled, we headed off to the office to print off the photo we’d taken earlier.  I layered a circle {that was as wide as our jar lid} on top of the photo to make the cutting part easier, but you could just as easily print the photo as is and trace a circle onto it afterwards using a cup or other circular object.

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Then, I cut out the circular photo and attached it to the jar lid using a glue stick – easy peasy!  {You may want to laminate the photo or cover it with clear contact paper for extra durability.}  And voila – our Goodnight Moon I spy bottle was complete. ☺

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So far, we’ve used our bottle a few different ways…  Grae loves to search for the items as I read the book aloud to her slowly, and it makes for a great {and quiet!} independent activity when some downtime is needed.  I’ve also let her play with it for a little bit just before bedtime, which was a nice treat as well as a calming way to end the day {yay for that!}

Goodnight Moon Calming I Spy Bottle | Mama Papa Bubba

Alright, ready for some other fun Goodnight Moon activities from our lovely Preschool Book Club friends?  Check them out here:
 
Book Club
 
memory game       |       lavender play dough kit       |       balloon art       |       scavenger hunt 

Want to try a little preschool book club of your own?  You can see the entire series here.

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