Noisy Shakers and a Jar of Good Things
One loud activity and one quiet one. Make shakers for the countdown, and a jar to look back at next year.
Make rice-filled bottle shakers for a New Year countdown, then fill a memory jar with good things from the past year. Suits ages 3 to 8 and takes about 30 minutes.
The short version
- A third full is the loudest. Fuller is quieter.
- Tape the lid down, then check it again.
- Write the year on the jar lid, or you will not know when you open it.
- Age
- Ages 3–8
- Prep
- 5 min
- Play time
- 30 min
- Mess
- Medium
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Where
- Indoor
Why kids love this
The shakers are loud and they made them, which is the entire appeal and needs no further justification. The jar is the opposite and works for a different reason — children are surprisingly keen to remember things, especially their own things, and reading it back a year later is genuinely lovely.
What you'll need
- Small plastic bottles with lids, one per child
- Dry rice, lentils or pasta
- A funnel, or a rolled paper cone
- Strong tape
- Stickers, paper and tape to decorate
- A large jar
- Slips of paper and a pen
Before you start
Wash and dry the bottles thoroughly. A damp bottle makes the rice clump and the shaker sounds wrong. Cut the paper slips for the jar in advance — twenty or so.
How to do it
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Shakers: give each child a dry bottle and a funnel.
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Let them pour rice in until it is about a third full. Fuller is quieter, so stop before it looks full.
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Put the lid on and tape it down firmly. Tape is not optional.
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Decorate the outside with stickers and paper.
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Test them. Try a full one and a nearly empty one and hear the difference.
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Jar: give everyone slips of paper.
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Ask for good things from the last year — a day out, something funny, something they learned to do. Write or draw one per slip.
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Fold them and put them in the jar. Put the jar away and open it next New Year.
Make it easier
Pre-fill the shaker and let them decorate only. For the jar, they draw rather than write.
Make it harder
Ask for a memory from each month, which takes real thinking. Or make a set of shakers that make different notes and work out why.
Other ways to play it
- Fill shakers with different materials — lentils, dried peas, bottle tops — and compare the sounds.
- Use the shakers to keep a beat to music.
- Start a jar for the coming year instead and add to it as things happen.
- Make a countdown chain and tear one link off each hour.
- Draw round their hand and date it, then compare next January.
How it changes by age
- Three: pouring rice with a funnel, decorating, drawing for the jar.
- Four to five: they can manage the whole shaker, and dictate memories for you to write.
- Six and up: writing their own memories, and experimenting with different fillings for different sounds.
What they're learning
Filling a bottle through a funnel is genuinely tricky pouring practice. The sound comparison is a small piece of physics — more rice, less room to move, duller sound — and children work it out themselves if you let them test rather than tell them.
Clearing up
Sweep up the spilled rice. The shakers themselves will be loud for several days, which is the price of the activity.